Week 16 Evaluation of web 2.0 tools

I have added a Feedburner widget to my blog - I will be seriously embarrassed if anyone subscribes! But am thinking it would be a very worthwhile feature for our library website.

Set up a Google Alert for "Wollondilly", it will be interesting to see what the world has to say about our shire and then how we can use that in the library, for example I found out that nominations for Dilly Youth 2010 is now open - maybe we can publicise this along with out youth resources/services for some shameless promotion.

I have recently used SurveyMonkey to create an evaluation form for our Facebook for Seniors workshop. It's very easy use, and provides lots of options to customise your survey.

Week 15 Delicious

Love love love delicious! I think my favourite new tag is "toread". I have had a delicious account for a while now and have also created a wollondillyreference account (which is now linked to twitter - wlis on twitter).

Week 14 Twitter

I set up the Library's Twitter account and we use it quite often - we're mindful of only posting useful tweets and not bombarding it just to appear active. Our account is linked to our Facebook page, and most of our tweets now are fed from there. PS Have just linked Twitter and Flickr - see most recent tweets on the righ.

Week 13 Refreshing your blog

Although I am not a fan of blogging, I do like reading other people's blogs especially for professioanl purposes - blogs have widened my network of professioanl support. I liked some of the new templates available and used the new the 'Search' tool for my blog. I had a quick look at some of the templates in the sites listed under 'Adventure' lots of goods ones but too many, making choosing overwhelming.

Week 11: Online applications and tools

Great way to work collaboratively on projects with colleagues from different organisations especially.

Week 10: Mashups

Love this - so much fun! Great way to customise library promotions.

Week 9: Podcasts and Audio

Podcasts have so much potential for user-education. We recently held a "Living Libraries" event and there is definitely potential for this application in an area like this.

Week 8: Answer boards and social searching

Interesting concept especially for librarians. We have a "Ask a local Librarian" tool on our website and if had the enough staff we would have liked to have featured Meebo - not really an answer board but still in line with social searching. Don't know if I would trust an answer board with anything serious - but still a fun and interesting tool for light hearted issues. Our patrons are able to rate and review all titles in our catalogue (reviews that approved are made available for all to read).

Week 7: Tagging, folksonomies, del.icio.us and LibraryThing

These are my absolute favourite 2.0 technologies! I have had a delicious account for two years and still use it all the time (see tagroll). I have even created a Reference account on delicious for the library and we use it for homework help etc. LibraryThing is wonderful too, we have subscribed to LibraryThing for Libraries and have integrated it into our catalogue.

Week #4 – RSS; Use an RSS aggregator to connect to 5 RSS feeds

Got my aggregator up and going (used Bloglines) - very easy to do 5 but doubt if I'll have time to actually look at it, curse of the information overload age! Found great web 2.0 blog at the Guardian UK also liked the recipe of the day at Taste.com.au. Not sure how useful this would be for our lirary website, as we regularly use Facebook and Twitter to broadcast updates.

Week #3 – Explore Flickr, tagging and Creative Commons; Post pictures to Flickr

Loved Flickr - another great way to promote the library (see Flickr badge). Paid membership would probably be necessary if a lot of photos were upload just to be able to organise them in a meaningful way. Also, good idea to use standardised tags for sake of consistency.