Caution: wet paint

Wikis were the topic of the Web 2.0 course for week five. I use Wikipedia frequently but haven't really looked at or thought about other forms of wikis until now. A friend of mine works in IT at a university and they use a wiki for all of their procedures. Any of the staff can update it and there is also one person designated to making sure all of the information is up-to-date. I think this would be fantastic for the libraries. It would probably take a fair bit of work to set it up, but I like the idea of having one place for procedures without having to go in and out of files on the T-drive. It would be great for things like the Summer Reading Challenge or the Solar Cities kits. Sometimes information gets sent out via email which gets looked at, and perhaps forgotten before the time comes to actually use it. If it was then added to a wiki we could easily access it at the desk when it's needed.

Chair in sky by Nicki Varkevisser

Time for a feed!

I had never used Google Reader before but I had subscribed to RSS feeds using the program Mail on my computer at home. Google Reader is great though, since I can access it from any computer I happen to be on. I find it is especially useful for websites that don't get updated very often. Instead of having to keep checking them every once in a while, RSS will let me know when there is something new for me to read. Here are some that I subscribed to on Google Reader:

Things organized neatly

Beaufort Street Blog

One portrait a day

Smitten kitchen

Wellness WA

Photo from Things organized neatly

(Image) Sharing is caring!

This week I had a look around Flickr. I have always found it to be a good website, but sometimes you have to trawl through a bit of junk to find the kind of picture you are looking for. The photo I've posted is of a street in Japan. I didn't have any real reason for choosing it, just liked the look of it.

I think image sharing websites can definitely be useful for libraries! They can share ideas through photos, check out what other libraries are doing and get inspiration for displays. And also maybe ideas of what not to do, in the case of some... interesting library signs.

Umbrellas & bicycles by isado

The last minute

Well, here I am writing my first blog post on the last day for getting it done! It's not much of a surprise really. And it's not due to any negativity towards this Web 2.0 training course, but rather a lack of time!! I'm sure that many others struggle with this as well but anyway.

I do like blogs, reading them mostly. My favourite tend to be food-related. I have found most of these by searching for particular recipes. Orangette is a fantastic one. The author Molly met her husband through the blog, they now own and run a restaurant together and she even got a book published as a result of the blog. If that's not evidence of the power of blogs I don't know what is!

Okay, I think that's enough for now... I still have several weeks of the course to catch up on.