11/30/2007

Library of the Future

Yesterday's LRSN Forum, themed 'The Library of the Future' was well attended and had some very interesting speakers. Hopefully the outlines of the presentations will soon be posted. Katherine has already put hers here - she's so quick off the mark that lady!
I managed to avoid presenting this year by dobbing in someone else and was surprised that none of the presenters mentioned Second Life (my original proposed topic) or gaming which appear to be very big in the library blogs I read. There were, however, some great speakers and topics; in particular Shanta, Katherine and Connie. There were several concurrent sessions that I would have liked to attend too - but one can't be everywhere.
Facebook was discussed and this morning I came across a relevant article, Why Your Company Needs To Be on Facebook that adds food for thought.
I met and talked with many old friends while digging into the delicious refreshments supplied at lunch and teatimes. Thanks Sandy for organising another successful gathering of TAFEWA Librarians and others interested in the sector.

11/28/2007

Facebook and Privacy

Last week I copied a recipe to my Epicurious recipe box and was surprised to see a popup advising me that the information had been added to my Facebook record. I had only recently opened a Facebook account and, like most users, didn't read all the fine print. I considered closing that account as I really don't want my web surfing habits to be made public - but then forgot about the incident - until today.
Reading a recent blog post on
librarian.net I saw this comment:

I explain the word “default” to my sudents often. To people new with computers, the ideas of the comptuers default settings is a little perplexing. Fred Stutzman highlights part of David Weinberger’s post about Facebook where he discusses how Facebook’s default privacy settings are all wrong. Completely and totally wrong. Don’t miss one of Fred’s earlier posts where he discusses how to turn the Facebook Beacon off to stop it from telling marketers more about you than you may be aware of.


What a good idea. I promptly followed the instructions for turning off the beacon and hope that I can surf privately in future.

11/15/2007

Second Life @ Central?

We have been thinking about using virtual worlds for teaching at Central TAFE for several months and several lecturers are excited at the prospect - but so far we haven't seemed to be getting anywhere. Now, however, things are beginning to move with the establishment of a wiki where we can share our thoughts and ideas.
I've been emailing interested people every relevant article I come across and really hope that Central can establish a presence in SL. I look forward to being able to do some training both in-world and on campus. It would be a shame if the virtual librarianship courses that I was lucky enough to attend were not put to good use.How my avatar has changed since those early days!

11/13/2007

Library Planning


The wiki is up for Central TAFE's day of planning "To establish Library goals and projects to meet the College Strategic Plans for 2008". The list of what we want to achieve is growing ever longer and I am afraid that, as was the case last year, few of these objectives will be realised.

I do hope our planning meeting doesn't result in this:

Discussed on the blog Librarian in Black was Michael Stephens's keynote address Ten Technologies: Ideas to Improve Library Productivity. There are some wonderful ideas and comments here - not least being his closing statements of library philosophy: Learn to Learn. Adapt to Change. Scan the Horizon.

Other ideas for library planning come from Katherine’s blog, Librarian’s Matter; David Lewis’ A model for academic libraries 2005 to 2025 and Part one and Part two of staff responses to the McMaster University Library Strategic planning process.

iLibrarian also has links to presentations from the Hawaii Library Association Conference.

11/09/2007

On Blogs, Wikis and RSS

Yesterday I presented 2 training sessions on blogs, wikis and RSS. The first was for staff at my college and I was pleased to see that our professional development sessions are being made available to staff at other colleges too - swelling attendance at this course by 3. However, had I known in advance, I might have planned for a generic login to be available instead of wasting time (mine and my students') running around finding out how to log them into our network. We had fun and I was gratified to read the comments on the evaluation sheets. I hope I gave them all something that they can use both for work and for personal communication. They were so eager to get stuck into the practical part of the workshop that they didn't even want to stop for tea and Tim-Tams.

That afternoon I repeated part of the session (blogs and RSS only) for a group of Library Studies students. This was at a different campus and I made the fatal mistake of leaving my nerdstick with all my presentations stuck in the pc where I did the first workshop. Fortunately I was able to download a copy from the shared drive and use a usb stick from lost property so the day was saved.

These students had a blogging assignment but I tried to give them more than just the basics. We discussed web 2.0 and library 2.0 which they claimed to have never heard about! I think I managed to get across the need for finding out for oneself about all the new tools and technology available and not just waiting to be told what is and is not important. To that end this blog post from
LibraryCrunch
and the accompanying comments make interesting reading.

11/02/2007

Thanks for your support

Three people have commented on my decision to stop blogging, one a complete stranger (I think) so I'll keep it up for a little while longer. I wonder why previously posted comments have disappeared into the wild blue yonder?
I've also been asked to do a workshop on blogging for our Library Studies students next week and it would be setting a bad example if I were to give up - wouldn't it?
What's the good of having a mind if you can't change it - so here I go again.

Before reading the comments I had been giving my blog some thought (what else does one think about when lying in bed at night?) and decided that, if I were to start again, I would possibly talk more about some of the things I've been doing recently. I've bypassed the chance to say anything new about Podcamp Perth that I attended last weekend (why was I the only representative from Central TAFE when it was held on one of our campuses?) but can now add my bit about the
discussion held in Second Life last night about the new TV series "The Librarians"
This is a picture of the discussion held at Laneways Library on ABC Island. Emerald Dumont was the moderator and I (Galia Beck) her faithful assistant am sitting on her right. Discussion was fast and furious. I was kept busy handing out notecards and IM-ing people who needed help of any kind.A link to the transcript and another snapshot can be found on Virtual librariesinteract.info. During the discussion we were asked to comment on weird things that had happened in our libraries and my report on the shoe fetishist found under a table sucking on some-one's shoe was voted the most gross. For that I won a prize of $30 to be spent at the ABC shop in RL. Thanks everyone.