Ah YouTube I love looking for clips on here it can be great fun. Here is a clip posted by the Harper College Library which provides a funny tour of the Library.



YouTube can be a great way to provide access to videos. UniSA is already using YouTube to promote the Uni there are some great testimonials from students and lectures including the Knowledge Works Lecture series already on YouTube for people to access.

Here is a great YouTube video created by the UniSA Library on how to use Summon.



It is a quick, fun way to demonstrate how useful Summon can be to locate resources. I definitely think the Library should continue to use YouTube as a way to promote the excellent resources and services we provide.

Web 2.0 Awards

I thought I should finally get back to finishing the 23 things, better late than never!

I had a look at the web 2.0 Awards list and as I am moving soon I thought I would check out the Real Estate winners. The first prize for the Real Estate awards went to Zillow.com. I thought at first that it was similar to Realestate.com.au an Australian site which allows you to search for properties either to rent or buy. I use this site a lot it has great search options it allows you to save searches and receive emails when a new property matching your search terms is placed on the site. Although there are similarities this site has some great features which realestate.com.au does not have. It allows you to compare on a graph the price of the property to the area and also lets you see if there has been any increases or decreases in value. The graph showed that there had been a dramatic drop in the price of the property and properties in the area in 2008 (this is a US website) For this property it showed a list which showed the real estate agent had dropped the current sale price of the house and the prices the house previously sold for in 2001 and 1996. There was also a map of the surrounding area showing estimates of the house prices. These features would be an excellent addition to the Australian website which only allows you to see a sample of prices of properties which have sold in the same area. I am guessing that the real estate agents would probably not be so keen to see these additions. This website makes it easier for buyers to research local prices and to see the past prices and how values in the local area have changed allowing them to become more informed.

I do not think that this specific site would have any value in a library setting. However it may be possible to incorporate aspects from the site into a Library setting for example the use of graphs to compare values. In a search results list it would be handy to have a graph which shows how many times each item has been cited.

Online Applications and Tools

Well goodness it has been a while since my last post and I feel very guilty. For this week we were meant to take a look at some online productivity tools. I signed up for Zoho Writer what seems like an eternity ago. It is an online word processor which allows you to share your documents with your friends. At first I thought what is the point of this I have Microsoft Office why do I need Zoho. But after checking out their website and trying it out I can see how it would be very useful. It is a great way to share documents without having to constantly email and get confused about different versions of documents. I also thought this would be great for people who have an Apple Mac computer at home and use microsoft at work. This way you can simply save your document online and access it from the different computers. I found Zoho Writer to be very similar to Microsoft Office word it has very similar features and is easy to use. Zoho also has many other applications such as Zoho sheet which is a spreadsheet application and Zoho Show which is a presentation tool. It came 2nd in the Web 2.0 awards in the organization category with high scores for usability and usefulness.

Wiki Sandbox

After reading everyone else's blogs and the trouble they had trying to access the Learning 2.0 wiki sandbox I was a bit worried. When I saw that Eleanor Thomas was the last person to edit the 'favourite blogs' page I thought woo hoo I might be able to add mine under the lovely UniSA banner. However here is a picture of me struggling against the quicksand in the sandbox!

It is a pity that this wiki hasn't been kept up to date I noticed that other people have been posting comments asking for help and looking for the elusive 'edit' button.

Anyway I will write my wiki post about favourite things here instead. Hmm I find it hard to pick favourties... favourite colour, favourite song etc I think it depends on what mood I am in. Recently I voted for my top 10 favourite songs for the Triple J hottest 100 of all time. I found it extremely hard to pick just 10. I think my list included some Radiohead, The Cure, Pearl Jam, The Violent Femmes and even a Johnny Cash cover of a Nine Inch Nails song. When asked what my favourite song is and why? I wrote David Bowie's Space Oddity because "My Mother said to get things done you better not mess with Major Tom".

I better mention favourite book seeing this is a Library related blog. Again I find this very hard I do have my favourite authors who I tend to stick to although I am trying to branch out a bit. I love and re-read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy so I suppose that would be one of my favourites (or 3 to be exact) I also still love The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which brings back fond memories of my year 2 teacher reading it to the class.

Closest Book Meme

Harry looked quickly over his shoulder and saw the archway shrink instantly back into solid wall.

Here are the instructions please join in:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

The nearest book on my desk was Harry Potter and Philospher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. I received the final book The Deathly Hallows for my birthday last year or was it the year before anyway I have put off reading it till I reread 'The Half-Blood Prince' so I could remember what happened. After going to see the new Harry Potter movie I thought I might just reread the rest of the series as well, so I pulled it off the bookcase. I think it is funny that reading just that one sentence can enable you to visualise that whole scene where Harry has his first glimpse of the 'magic world' as he steps into Diagon Alley.

Wiki Wiki Woo

Just a quick post I just started checking out some wikis online. The only wiki I have had any experience with is Wikipedia. I must admit I really like Wikipedia but I know I should probably question the reliability of the information on there a bit more. I guess that is a downside with wikis because anyone can edit or write things on there how do we know that the information is accurate. Anyway I just looked at one of the wikis mentioned on 23 things and I really like the 'Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki' it has some really great information on there. I just started having a look at the tips for new Librarians they have lots of helpful hints that people have added. They also have a great section about looking for a job with hints about applying for jobs and going to interviews. I think it is great that people can share information and ideas openly like this. Here it is if anyone is interested in going and having a look for themselves or possibly joining up and sharing their own ideas on the wiki:
http://libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

I gave Technorati a try I think I prefer Del.icio.us but I might have another play around on there later. I looked at tagging my posts using Technorati tags but it looked a bit too complicated for me. Something else to try later. I enjoyed reading the perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries. I thought Rick Anderson's Away from the "icebergs" was quite interesting and made some great points. His comments about reliance on user education and asking yourself what your library's "patron-to-librarian ratio is" really got me thinking. It really is impossible to train every library user so we need to make it easier for them to find the information they need. Personally I think UniSA Library's homepage and catalogue is great and quite user friendly especially when compared to some of the other Universities websites. Although there is always room for improvement and we have so much information and help to provide it sometimes creates its own barrier to patrons. I worry that some of the great help guides and information to help students can go missed because our patrons either do not know about them or do not know where to find them. But we cannot provide all the information on the homepage (obviously or the writing would have to be really little) there needs to be a balance.
I find the same problem when talking to students who need help that you have to find a balance that you do not give overload them with too much information.