Woohoo Wikis!

I love wikis! Apart from Wikipedia I knew very little about them. I can see HEAPS of ways they can be used in my library.
Some wicked wiki ideas:

• develop a wiki to communicate with branch libraries
• intranet wiki for procedure manuals (this is my fave idea as it's my job to update all of these!)
• use a wiki for specific projects (would have been brilliant to use for coordination with our young Living Books for our "Living Libraries" project just completed)
• staff and client book reviews with a link to and from our existing website and catalogue

Now to join a wiki about being a new parent & balancing work and family....... maybe I should start my own!

RSS and all that....

I found RSS feeds interesting but once again overwhelmed by the volume and scope of feeds available. It took me forever to settle on my 5 feeds and next I'll be tackling adding a couple of them to my own blog.
I have to agree that using RSS feeds at the moment seems to be adding more pressure to my time-poor existence, not reducing it. I really just want to have the one place to go that will deliver everything at my fingertips (email, news, photos etc) so having all these different accounts somewhere is confusing and time-consuming. Hopefully as I become more familiar I'll find a way to consolidate them all into a one-stop-web 2.0-shop.
In the library environment though, I'd love for my library's website to have an RSS feed available. It would be brilliant to promote events and new resources this way.

Thanks Naemick!

The photographer of this gorgeous shot left me a comment to say he has kindly changed the copyright of the photo I chose last week. So now I can happily post it!

Bring on Week 4!

I was surprised to find 167 photos of my hometown on Flickr and some of them were beautiful shots. Every image I looked at was Copyrighted though so here's a link to a nice shot of Hot Air Balloons taking off from one of our sports ovals during our 2007 La Festa (Easter Festival). Hope you like it!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/naemick/448885467/

Well I've had a good look around Flickr and decided to add this picture. It seems to go with the flavour of my first post don't you think?

I did find a photo I preferred which had the most gorgeous cocker spaniel with her two brand new puppies but it had a full copyright on it. I'm still trying to get my head around Copyright vs. Creative Commons.

The volume of images available on Flickr just blows me away! I found it to be a huge time-waster. I think it's a brilliant backup strategy for personal photos, and an easy, inexpensive way to put photos and information about library buildings and events up there for the world to see.

Life's a balancing act,

and the older you get, the more balls are in the air.

I've thought this for many years, but seriously before becoming a mum I had no clue! I've now ventured into the scary world of working motherhood, so this blog will detail some of my new 'challenges' as I learn to be a working mum.
What's with Web 2.0 anyway? I expected to return to work after taking time off to tend to my new baby, and have to be taught how to use the new photocopier, fax machine, and library system. The last thing I expected was to be completely unaware of a whole new way of using the Internet!
I've never emailed so much in my life as when I was on maternity leave (to the fabulous girls in my mothers group, thank you for keeping me sane), but between these snippets of outside life, singing lullabies,changing nappies, and playing peekaboo, it seems I missed a lot!
Hopefully this exercise will go some way to bridging the gap.....