Heading for the Top End

Lyn and I are headed Darwin to the ALIA Top End Symposium in October to delivery a paper on the 23 Things. The theme is "e-volving education": focussing on the changing ways in which the library and information industry promotes learning and the evolution of how the library industry maintains its own "education" in ensuring that its professionals stay on top of information trends.

Keeping up with everyone's blogs

Now that lots of new ECU bloggers are coming on board, keeping up with everyone's blogs could be a chore. But, there's a solution! It's called RSS and will be covered in Week 3. Read Web Wiz's blog post on Easy Reading which will explain more.

P.S. Western Australia is the Banksia capital of the World and the Mt Barker Banksia Farm is the place to see them all.

Deja vu all over again

It feels like Deja vu all over again.
This week we are launching the ECU Learning 2.0 program with a series of seminars on each campus. For those just coming on board you'll learn some useful skills, like setting up a blog. And you'll also some fun with stuff like Image Generators, eg: this one

Perth Unconference on Library 2.0

Last Friday (Aug 3) a few of us from ECU attended the very first “Unconference” at the State Library. The idea is a open and fairly unstructured day to share information between colleagues. The topic was Library2.0 and the whole day was fun, stimulating, and a free sharing of ideas, (and pizza) between fellow librarians from all sectors.

Presenters were very professional. Some new technologies were demonstrated. Con and Kathryn even ad-libbed in a session called “Karaoke Powerpoint” from some PowerPoints sent that morning from the US!

One amazing aspect was that the whole event was organised via the Unconference Wiki and no face to face meetings took place prior to the day. To get a feel for what the day was like have a look around the Wiki. How do we find the time to learn about emerging technologies? Check out the practical tips on Kathryn’s wiki.

Grande Finale

As a reward for completing ECU Learning I’m giving myself a Web2.0 certificate. You can have one too when you get through all the 23 Things!


Well it’s been a terrific journey and I’ve learned heaps.

My responses to the questions posted on #23 are:

What have you personally learned from this program?

I have picked up some useful skills and have connected all the dots so understand how this all fits together. By the time you get to the end of this program you realise how important the tagging is as it enables you to really connect with others. Having a My Space to gather all your feeds is a great idea and helps you to organise the information flow.

What have you learned about yourself, others and the organisation in which you work?

It’s been terrific working though this with a great bunch of staff in the Pilot Group learning from one another. Now we know who the experts are, so you can’t hide any more! I like the idea of starting this with a pilot group, so that when it is rolled out to all the staff there will be a willing group to spread the word.

Discovery learning is an appropriate methodology for such a program since many of these technologies you need to USE, before you really understand them. Through the program I have made many connections outside the ECU Library, with instructional designers, professional development staff, academic staff.

What was the most important skill you have learned and why?

I would have to say Blogging was a useful skill. I had blogged before through Bloglines and through the trial of the Blackboard blog . Those two interfaces are not as friendly as Blogger. The whole set up of Blogger is superior to either of the others and actually makes the whole journey fun. But blogging is a bit of a sole pastime, so unless you use social tagging you may be blogging into the never-never.

What action will you now take if any?

Start a library blog aimed at the faculty.
Investigate providing faculty subject guides for students using Wetpaint.
Commit time to a library blog to be aimed at students

Would students use these technologies as part of the library’s online environment?

Absolutely. The Wiki subject guides would be focused on students. There have been discussions about starting a library blog to be aimed at students, to promote the library and respond toe students’ queries. Podcasts, YouTube, the lot is student NetGen territory and we need to meet them where they congregate.

Is there some specific technology that you would like to see the library adopt ?

Start a library blog
Use Wikis to replace some of the collaborative work currently done via email
Develop our podcasts more.
Come to an agreement re tagging and tags to use corporately.

I look forward to sharing more ideas with the Pilot Group when we have our Focus Group and Wind-up as there’s NOTHING that can replace face to face. Let’s all wear our Just Ask @ Your Library T-shirts and rest on our laurels for a while..

Web 2.0 Awards

The Web 2.0 Awards site was a revelation. In the subject categories I first of all checked out Hosted Wikis. They rated Wetpaint ahead of PBWiki. Now that we have some experience of the Wiki in Blackboard this provides a nice comparison. I found Wetpaint more straight forward than PBWiki. I found the peanut butter in PBWiki a bit too corny!

ECU Library should investigate using Wetpaint to develop a Wiki. It provides a pleasant looking interface and is easy to master.

Then, under the caterory of Books I looked at LibraryThing and joined this. The introduction says its purpose is to “Connect with people who read similar books to you, and get suggestions as to what you should read next”. Joined added my book which only 7 others had added, as its quite a new Australian novel.

I then discovered the Australian LibraryThingers. "A group for everyone who connects with Australia (residents, expats, lovers of Australian literature) and who are part of the LibraryThing collective". So that was a good find, as the rest of LibraryThing is quite US oriented. I'll explore more when I have some more time. (famous last words!)

Learning 2.0 around the world

Helene Blowers has placed a Google map on her blog showing all the libraries around the world that are into Learning 2.0.

She’s also launched a follow up called Learning 2.1. Read all about it on her blog. Makes sense as the technolgy is moving so fast and the original Learning 2.0 is about a year old now. So if you want to keep going.....

There are now quite a few universities running Learning 2.0 including some in Canada, and the Queensland State Library too.