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.