Rollyo

Rollyo is a website in which you can create your own search roll.



For instance I have set up my own called LibraryOrganisations. In this search I have added numerous library organisations to my search list. This search list is then generated into a search engine by way of a google type bar; so when I search jobs, or library tech etc it will search for those terms over only those websites that I have told Rollyo that I want to include under the LibraryOrganisations search (roll).
You can go to the Rollyo website http://rollyo.com and look under my username of helen.plunkett and search through my LibraryOrganisations search roll which will just look through the websites that I have added.

Here is a YouTube clip that explains Rollyo in a bit more detail. It explains how it works on the basis of doing a job search.



dann4862 (2009), Job Searching in Rollyo, viewed on 12 October 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBEkiSNPqgQ

Podcasts

What is a Podcast?


Rhode,J (2007), What is a Podcast? a brief introduction, viewed on September 3 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQFKNcdCdLM

I found this YouTube video really helpful to explain what a Podcast is and how it works. It may go into a little more detail than you may need, but I found it great.

If you go to the Denver Public Library Podcasts site you have access to numerous different Podcasts. On the right hand side there are some links to their Podcasts based on category. They are; Nursery Rhymes, Interviews, Song, Beatrix Potter, Folk and Fairytales, Storytime Favourites, Folktales, News and lastly General.
It is a further example of how a library can come into your own home.
Universities also make use of Podcasts for tutorials.

Online Bookmarks?????

Continuing on with talk about bookmarks. We all know that it is handy to use a bookmark when reading a book. Using a bookmark means that we can go straight to the page we were up to without having to read through bits to find that page. Now it is essentially the same with online bookmarks. When browsing online on your own computer you may regularly like to store the details of this page or website. You will usually do this by clicking on an "add bookmark" button or clicking on the "add to favourites" icon. It really depends on what search engine and preferences you have on your computer as to what appears.
This will enable you to go directly to the webpage and not have to do an internet search again, or type in the address which you may have had to take the time to write out. The main problems with having to do a manual retrieval is that you may not have written down the web address correctly, which is quite easy to do given that some web pages have a long URL, or the search details that you put in may not be exactly the same as you used last time therefore bringing up a different set of results to go through.
So this brings us to the timesaver of making an "online bookmark". This is going to work wonders for you, it will save you time and you will be able to access sites at the click of a mouse. But Uh Oh, what happens when you are not at your regular computer????? Well you don't have access to your bookmarks/favourites. But before you have a melt down about how something useful has just become completely unhelpful check out this link http://www.delicious.com/.
Delicious is an online bookmark/favourite storage database. What you do is sign up for an account, it's FREE, and then start adding your web addresses. You can do this as easy as copy/paste. To make it possible to search your favourites, you add tags to each web address. It will automatically give you some to start off with as you are entering it into your database. For instance if I have a book website entered I can tag it with books, and children because it is a based on childrens books. Then I can add a website for craft, and add the tags craft and children as it has school holiday activities, which I can also make a tag for. When I want to search for something for my children and I know that I possibly have some websites stored that might be suitable, I can do a search for children and all of the websites that I have tagged with children will pop up, making it a huge timesaver for me.
Delicious is a Social Bookmarking service, which means you can save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking.
So you can go to delicious and search through peoples bookmarks for suitable websites or you can just store your own.
This means that by changing computers you do not have to loose access to all of your favourite sites. Wherever you have access to the web, you can just type in http://www.delicious.com/ and then enter your user name and password and gain access to your bookmarks/favourites.




This site is really helpful and well worth looking at and signing up for an account. It truly is DELICIOUS ; )

For Your Viewing Pleasure

This is just something I came across in my YouTube browsing, I thought you might find it as silly and funny as I did.

The Dewey Decimal Rap

Library Storage

After visiting the Law Library at the University of Tasmania I was astounded to find out that they have a lot of their items stored off site due to the lack of space for all of the collection. This is due to the fact that all items need to be kept as they can be needed and referred to at anytime. The Librarians do a great job of accommodating of much of the collection as they can, even loosing some of their own space as a consequence.
I can't imagine what it must be like to have to order an item or even numerous items from the off site storage area. It takes time and once the request has arrived it is not necessarily going to be the one that the client was after, therefore the process needs to be started again.
In Tasmania it is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to gain funding for a massive storage project such as that used by the University of Chicago in their new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, but it would be great if we could. Check out the YouTube video below to see what I am talking about.


The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library: How It Works




Isn't it just amazing. I understand that we are a small state and it just doesn't seem feasible for us to have something this large, but surely we should be aiming to look at the possibility of completing a project for the long-term benefit of our University Library storage issues. It would bring jobs to the state, as well as bring us a state of the art library. Of course it makes sense to have this kind of library on the mainland, but it would be nice for Tasmania to have something. :)

DIY: Bookmark Monsters

You should check out this YouTube video I found. It shows you how to make bookmark monsters. I had a bit of a chuckle, she talks as much as me :). I thought it was a great project that any of us could do either for ourselves or with children or other people.



Here is the link to the blog that she got the idea from I Could Make That

Bookmarks

Bookmarks, a photo by fashion fucsia on Flickr.

I like to collect bookmarks. Admitedly I haven't got many as I just haven't had the money to spend on these little extras, but I do have a few. I have a really old antique one, some magnet ones, animals, holographic, business, seed, and the precious ones made for me by my children.

This is a pic I found on Flickr of some bookmarks. I love the colour and the simplicity, but especially the different colour ribbons.

Bookmarks are beautiful, cute or bizarre but the one thing they have in common is that they all serve a purpose, to keep the page we are up to. Well that is unless you have a child who happily runs to get your book for you and lets it fall out on the way, hence the magnet bookmarks are functionally my favourite.

Sharing some Flickr Photos.

stirring dust, a photo by brookeshaden on Flickr.

This one is magic. To me it is chaos in calm. Despite the turmoil around her she sleeps soundly. The photographer calls is Stirring Dust with the caption "Only in our sleep can we read the pages of our dreams".

What is an RSS feed?

Well from the guy who explains things so well, here is another YouTube tutorial.



On the right of this blog are some RSS feeds that I have added for you to look at. They are of blogs that I find interesting and are updated on my blog when they are updated by the author. This happens because I have set it up as an RSS feed, therefore I don't have to go looking at the blog to see when it has been updated, instead it automatically updates because of the RSS feed.

I generally use Google Reader to store all of my RSS feeds. I have many more than what I have listed on my blog. In my Google Reader account it holds all of the feeds and shows me the updates as they come through. It will advise me of how many I have not read and of the date in which they were updated.

It would be great for more libraries to create web based information and updates in which people could link to using an RSS feed. It would enable them to make sure that all of their clients are kept up to the nano-second up to date.

Exploring Wiki's

The best way for me to describe a Wiki is to get you to watch this great YouTube video.



I think that this video is a really straightforward way of explaining a wiki.

Here is a link to a library wiki called "The blogging libraries wiki". The purpose of this wiki is to collect links to library blogs, that is institutional blogs, not individual librarian blogs.

To be honest I didn't find the Wiki's to be particularly interesting. But maybe that is purely because I don't tend to use them a lot. We have been using a Wiki as part of our course unit and it has been quite helpful and fun. I am glad that I have been able to learn how to use one and do feel that it has a valid place out there in the world.

Wiki's can be used for collaboration. For instance for collarborative document editing, collarboratively-developed manuals, conference wiki's, planning and organising events.

There are a few different Wiki's that I would like to see set up within the Polytechnic library, such as favourite authors, study groups etc.

Thinking about learning.

This YouTube video was found while I was looking at another video of a 3 yr old digital native. The reason I am sharing it with you was due to the impact it made on me. The statistics given in it are shocking, the one about China was particularly interesting. Please watch it and tell me what you think by making a comment?

"This project was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills. Equally important, it serves to motivate district level leaders to provide teachers with the tools and training to do so."

Nesbitt, B. (2007), A Vision of K-12 Students Today, viewed on July 2 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8&feature=related

"Library Boy" blog in the spotlight

Adrien, M. (2005), Library Boy, viewed on July 1 2011, http://micheladrien.blogspot.com

This blog is about legal research news from an Ottawa Law Librarian. It is written by Michel-Adrien who is a former news researcher/journalist and web producer, and a reference librarian in the federal capital (Ottawa, Canada) since Sept. '05, and is a graduate of McGill University. Whilst I cannot verify that this information is correct I can still say that this blog is of a high authoratative nature due to the content of it.
The blog is aimed at keeping you informed and would be suitable for tertiary students or anyone interested in things to do with law.
All of the links tested within the blog work and take you directly to some of the different government reports and websites. Each blog post is extensively linked to previous blog posts when necessary and also includes labels at the end of each blog post relevant to the posting. You can click on any of these label links which are more like subjects and get more information from throughout the blog.
The blog is regularly kept up to date with postings archived every month since February 2005. It contains no advertisements and is set out in an easy to read manner.


I would highly reccommend this blog to anyone interested in or studying law. It is extensive in it's posting with frequent links and great subject labels. It is extremely easy to navigate and I had no issues with any links whilst moving about the site.

Browsing and wandering around in cyber space

This week I have started the unit Use & Extend Own Information Literacy Skills (CULLB602C) as part of my Diploma in Library and Information Services. I am required to complete this blog as part of my assessment. Leonie, my teacher, has given us some great websites to look at, and as a result my eyes have been opened to a whole world of information.

As most of us all know the World Wide Web is HUGE!! and without the correct tools and skills at searching through it you wouldnt be able to find a fraction of what is out there to be found. Leonie introduced us to a new website, well new to me anyway, called Technorati. On this website I can choose to search by either Blogs or Posts. As I am specifically interested in all things to do with libraries I chose to simply choose 'Blogs' and typed in library. Numerous different library blogs then came up with the links to access them.

Here are some links to some that you might find interesting; Going Green @your library where you can read different posts about how to make green choices when it comes to materials, furniture and programs in a library, Not So Distant Future which is a blog that explores the intersection of technology, libraries, and schools. and lastly so that I don't go on forever is Charlotte's Library which is a blog with reviews of fantasy and science fiction books for children and teenagers.

That is really just a miniscule snippet of the variety of blogs that can be found by accessing the Technorati database of blogs. So as you can see I have been having some fun browsing and wandering around in cyber space. We can't all get to the places we want to or even find out the information we want with what is available to us, but with the time, a computer with access to the internet and if you are lucky a friendly Library Technician to help you, you can explore the world and the universe. You just need to start asking the questions where can I find it? and how?

This is me :)