#12 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat!, How I Wonder Where Your At

Rollyo was very intuitive and self explanatory. I have composed and added a search roll on DVD reviews to this blog. I think I could use this tool for my own private research, and a carefully crafted, it could be used on a public library site.

#11 "Helps me find James Joyce, She always makes the right choice"

Librarything done and dusted. As others have mentioned a useful social tool to connect readers with other readers if it could be integrated into public library catalogues. I entered a bookshelf
of Doc Savage's library to test LibraryThing and it was easy to use although I needed to add some other resources to find bibliographic information for some older, obscure editions. I searched by ISBN because I wanted to record the actual edition I owned and this worked reasonably well . Tagging is an interesting concept and useful for a personal library, although I am not sure how well it works in larger groups. However I think the mixture of controlled vocabulary subject headings and the more spontaneous and common-language tags is the way of the future.

Librarything is fairly flexible in how it displays records and gives users the oportunity to change display formats. Subject headings generated even from Amazon seem reasonably accurate.

Librarything is still in it's Beta stage and seemed a little slow at times but I think this may ahve been a combination of my slow web connection and some problems the site was having at the time


I have also added the randomiser widgit to my blog to generated titles from my library.

#10 The pump don't work cos the vandals took the handle...

Subterranean Homesick Blues 07 generated by Bob Dylan Message Generator.

#9 Feed Me

Well I tried all of the blog finders and found all but Technocrati easy to use and quite powerful. I tried a search on capital punishment and Australia (quite topical at the moment) as a sample search. All search tools have different emphasis and if I have the time I would like to find out what method they use to rank their search results. Topix.net interests me, because of its current affairs/political bent, and I like the simplicity of the blogline and google search tools. Maybe I just don't get Technocati, so week six in this course will be good opportunity to reappraise it. I have added news feeds to my bloglines account . However these have all been favourites I have had recommended to me by friends, colleagues and experts I respect. Unfortunately search tools do not identify quality.

I also tried to add a widget for searching from the Feedster site but again not sure where to put the html coding.

I have also subscribed to RSS feeds for new material in the "Library Journal" through Ebsco ANZ Ref Centre. I subscribe to a similar service where publishers send mail alerts of new material appearing in particular jouranl titles, so I guess this is a development of this ssort of service.

#8 Can You Hear Me Major Tom?

RSS feeds are something I have been aware of for sometime, so its been a great opportunity to learn how to set up and use them properly. You can find the Man of Bronze's RSS feeds at
Doc Savage's Bloglines Account

I have organised some of my favourite feeds into two folders, "book reviews" and "MVLS Blogs". There is a way to create links directly to those two particular folders and generating the html coding is easy. However I cannot figure out how to add this coding to his blog in any other way than going directly to the htmal coding of the blog template and putting it there (beyond me at the moment).

Adding feeds to bloglines and organising them is dead easy. I tried various methods, from cutting and pasting addresses, to using features in Firefox, to using RSS options indicated on particlar sites and they all work equally well.

I think using feeds around book reviews and authors' web pages are obvious ways that public libraries can serve a group of patrons. More widely it could be used to aggregating news sources. Perhaps one danger of the new media is that as it becomes more targetted to a particular audience so people only sample views that they agree with. Blogline accounts that sample a diversity of views could be a way of exposing people to a more balanced view of the world.

#7 The Revolution Will Be No Re-Run, Brother…

I have so far enjoyed this course and found the use of these new information tools straightforward and fun. My impression though is that unless a blogger is a very good writer, with strong opinions, discussing interesting subjects, then recurrent viewers would be minimal and blogging becomes simply a vanity exercise. Perhaps the most famous blogger to transcend the triviality of the net was Salam Pax who gave first hand accounts of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 from an Iraqi perspective.

A blog to me seems to fall halfway between web pages and web forums. Blogs have greater design flexibility than forums and authors have sole control over content rather than being contrained by moderators. They are on the other hand easier to set up than web pages and it is easier to include interactive features. However the possibilities for features and designs of web pages are endless if you have the technological savvy. Forums seem more democratic in design and invite dialogue rather than simple reacting to a blog post.

My only other comment about web 2 is I hope it comes to our library soon. The core information tool for a library is its online catalogue, which contains vast amounts of intellectual capital and, in most library services, attracts at least three quarters of their web based hits. Software for library catalogues do not seem to have developed greatly over the last ten years, and to the end user function like little more than hyperlinked card catalogues. In contrast look at the features that appear directly on the Amazon database – lists of similar items purchased by users, user defined tags, ratings of books, customer reviews, links to related forums, and user constructed lists for all patrons to see. Why is it that the most effective reader-centred information provider is an online bookshop?

#6 and Out

Finally some one who'll do evening shifts cheaply. Designed using Badge Maker. I probably should have used different colours.