#23 Is this really the end?

Well it has definitely been a journey. I had a slow start as I was dealing with pregnancy related fatigue (poor me, lol). Of the activities, I found RSS feeds the most difficult to get my head around. But through the whole thing, I actually found blogging about my discoveries hardest of all. I think this got easier once I started to enjoy the activities.

I think most participants would agree that whether or not they would use all of these tools again, they are valuable for us to know, so that we can pass the knowledge to our patrons. I think it is becoming increasingly important for library staff to keep abreast of internet resources.

Many, many thanks to Lynette and Leslie for giving us this opportunity.

#22 Audiobooks

Ummm, okay, have I missed something? There are not many titles here, and I am not really interested in what they have. I also tried to search for ebooks through the World eBook fair site, and I don't like the search function - it searches through the whole text, not by title or author. Of course, you can go into their collections one by one and look there... maybe if I was a librarian I would be able to search this site more effectively.

On the other hand, the subscription services mentioned (Netlibrary and Overdrive) would be very useful for our library to have. We have several patrons who are avid book lovers, but whose eyesight limits them to talking books. Our collection simply isn't big enough. Giving them access to books on the web would greatly improve our service to them.

#21 Podcasts, smodcasts

I have added a podcast from podcast.net called The Book Show, broadcast by the ABC. I found this by doing a search for the word 'Australia'. I found searching for 'library' brought up too many US library sites, though I know that there is a lot to be gained by looking at other libraries innovations, this program included.

I also added some podcasts of personal interest to me, including celtic folk music, and learning Greek. I was going to delete my Bloglines account after this program had finished, but now I can't!!

I found podcast.net to be the best of the three sites listed (though I did have to install itunes to make it work). When you do a search a lot of info about that podcast comes up in the first screen, rather than having to go and investigate each and every result of your search. Yahoo was the worst for this.

Like YouTube, podcasts would be a great learning tool for use in the library - now if only we can convince patrons to use headphones!

#20 YouTube

Woohoo! A web tool that I already use! I love YouTube. It's easy to search, and in case you haven't got your search tag right, it shows you related videos, and others by the same user. Not all of my colleagues will yet know that I am pregnant, so I've been using YouTube to look at pregnancy related videos. The one above I found while comparing reviews on prams. This is the pram we want, with the seat taken off. Very cute!

I have also really enjoyed the Commoncraft videos that have been discovery tools in previous Learning 2.0 activities. A few times I have understood the webtool, but really not understood why you would bother using it. These videos have made all the difference, and as a learning tool within the library would be very useful.