Podcasts

I can definitely see the value of my library using podcasts for staff and patrons. One such way that it could be used would be by having our author talks that I run in the library put on to our website in the form of an ipod. That way people unable to attend on that particular day can watch and/or listen by this method.

Answer Boards

I've promised myself that I will have a "crack" at slamming the boards on the 10th of next month. This is definitely a worthwile exercise for librarians to get involved in and market ourselves. Wouldn't it be great if there was something similar for librarians to seek out answers from other librarians for certain questions.

Library Thing

My Library Thing account is:

http://www.librarything.com/home/rooallen

Library Thing will be useful for collection development and sharing knowledge about what books are out there. Should be fun to use also.

Delicious

I found delicious easy to use and can see how it would benefit libraries. My colleagues and I would definitely benefit from sharing bookmarks. Below is the link to my bookmarks on delicious.

http://delicious.com/mobgagui

Youtube

Isn't this wonderful! Although there are an endless amount of clips that I have looked at for personal interest, I can see how they might be used in the libraries. Training is probably the area where I can see this technology being most useful. It could also be useful for promoting events such as past author talks and other seminars or performances.

Below is the link for a performance by Anthony Warlow that I located on Google Video. This is one of my favourite songs.

Wikis

Although I can see the benefits of wikis, I remain very skeptical about there use. Wikipedia in particular makes me very cautious about the information contained in it. Some wikis I found, including the Montana History site, do seem to be quite accurate how ever. I guess those who really have an interest in this area would only be interested in accessing it and you could be reasonably sure they would add accurate content.

Our reference manual at our library could benefit by becoming a wiki. At present it is poorly managed and difficult to maintain. I feel this would change if it was changed to a wiki.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a wonderful means of accessing information. I can see that much time will be saved by using them. They have tremendous potential to be most useful in reference work which is part of my role in the library. I found the task of subscribing to my various news feeds relatively easy. Certainly the tip to use rss in the search was very useful. I was able to locate news feeds for every subject that interested me including archaeology, genealogy and history.