Monitoring RSS feeds posted from Zoho writer

Monitoring Commitments

Top of Form

Question 1:

Content – what do I want to monitor?  Make a list

Your Answer:
Listed in priority order:
CCL bibliofile http://cclbibliofile.wordpress.com/
CCL blog http://cclblog.wordpress.com/
Librarians matter
Library Link of the day
http://www.tk421.net/librarylink/
Librarytechnz
http://librarytechnz.natlib.govt.nz/
Internet archive
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Librarian in Black blog
http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/
Tame the Web
http://tametheweb.com
Librarians matter
http://librariansmatter.com/blog/
The shifted librarian
http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/
Delicious bookmarks tagged library by mstephens7
http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=89819606&site=24700895

Question 2:

Time available – How much time do I wish to/can I make available? Think about this in terms of daily or weekly timings. When would this be?

Your Answer:

Question 3:

Now backcast – put the time available against the content you want to monitor. You will want to monitor some content most days. Other content on a weekly basis. If there clearly is not enough time, you need to decide what’s most important about the content you will monitor.
 

Indicate what your priorities are!

Your Answer:
CCLBlog CCLBibliogile
Use http://www.libworm.com if I need RSS feeds on a particular topic and I haven't time to scan the feeds I have subscribed to using Bloglines and GoogleReader.
Otherwise scan in order as listed above.

Question 4:

Weeding & Reviewing – inevitably you will find new information sources and places in which you want to participate. Some of your sources will become less important to you. How often will you review… and weed!

Your Answer:
Every 3 months

Bottom of Form

 

Widgets and Gadgets

Before I forget again I'm going enter an aid to memory here that Gadgets are the Google version and Widgets the Yahoo version of an applet code that can be embedded in your blog or elsewhere on your Facebook, Yahoo or Google page. Yahoo widgets are a little cooler with transparency one feature. As far as library funcions go the Digital NZ widget is pretty cool I can definitely see uses for that. As we can see Christchurch City Libraries has already used the Coming Home customised a widget for our web pages. This sort of customizable widget/gadget would be great to have if you could search across the library web pages and select certain sections of it especially if you could select premium databases, sections of the web pages and the catalogue and build a mini search engine for your own purposes. I have an IGoogle account I took a quick peek at Netvibes and it makes a good alternative and connects to my Gmail okay but I'll stay with IGoogle as it has my bookmarks and is more widely used. Short of a cool gadget try Google gadgets or add stuff tab from your IGoogle page.

Monitoring and Managing

This module has demystified the catalogue quick search links we have on the desk pcs. Having search bookmarklets for the library catalogue cinch and local eye on my home computer toolbar saving time finding the link in my bookmarks. Highlight text and search for it in the bookmarklet of your choice be it the quick search the library catalogue, quick search cinch, quick search localeye, google, oxford english dictionary etc. I dragged the Oxford English Dictionary bookmarklet to my toolbar as instructed but it doesn't seem to conect, a shame, there may be time to take another look at it later. I'm not sure of the rest of the range of bookmarklets like resizing windows or page freshness are relevant to me at the moment but give an insite to tech heads lives.
I have put off subscribing to List servs for years for fear of being bombarded with emails so we will see how it goes. I subscribed to PubSig, ITSig and NZLibs it will be good to see what its all about.
My IGoogle page is making a lot more as I tailored it more to my needs recently. Currently I've got my Gmail, Google calender, Blogger, BBC news, Weather, Wikipedia search box, To Do list, Suduuku, Google news, Date and time and Blogs of note on it. I've imported my foxmarks and my Internet explorer bookmarks, now its a horrible confusing mess but they are all there and eventually I can find them, it needs a bit of work on my part to make the bookmarks more organised and workable.
GoogleWave looks promising for collaborative work enabling collaborative work on a document or viewing a video, while editing and giving comments in real time. You can invite who you want to collaborate or inviting people to view rewind the changes people have made to see who contributed what, this is all done through your browser which for some reason is important, looks easier to manage than a Wiki and I see a MediaWikiWave too just to add another feature to the pot.
This module also gave me the opportunity to revisit Delicious I originally bookmarked on Delicious to give me access to my bookmarks on other computers, however IGoogle gives you access to Google bookmarks as well as your Internet Explorer bookmarks and Foxmarks so I stopped using it. The advantage of Delicious is you can search for bookmarks and tag them so you can find them again easily and share other peoples bookmarks and your own. Subscribing to bookmark lists by tag or from a person of interest to you enables you to follow additions to the list much as an RSS feed. Its best features are the ability to create blog rolls which link to your blog, the ability to import and export bookmarks to firefox and Internet Explorer using the toolbar bookmarklets. From now on all your bookmarks will be instantly accessible both in your Firefox and Internet Explorer browser and from your bookmarks page on the Delicious website. Any changes you make to your bookmarks in either location will be synchronized. For example adding or deleting a Delicious bookmark in Firefox will add or delete it from your bookmarks page on Delicious which is very cool and its just a matter of clicking Tag button to add a bookmark to both of them which is great as its a drop down menu under Bookmarks to bookmark a page in Firefox which is a little clunky. I follow one RSS feed from Deli.cio.us through my Bloglines account Delicious/mstephens7/library, Delicious enables me to search for other lists of bookmarks from this account holder by searching for them under people and filtering the list by different tags I can further refine which of their bookmarks I follow.
I hadn't completed the Gadgets and Widgets module so I wasn't sure what Netvibes was so I did a quick reckie of the module and found it was the quickest module ever to complete so I can put another tick on my certificate. IGoogle and Netvibes usefulness for a team page is the question we are asked well since the good folk in the Digital libraries team have put all that effort into Desknet it seems a little redundant but I can see the use for a library without that IT support and it would be very useful.
As far as managing my RSS feeds go my priority is the CCLblog and

Bibliofile

blog then the rest of my RSS bloglines feeds as time allows I'll try to spend 10-15 minutes a day on the desk at quiet times. I would use http://www.libworm.com if I need RSS feeds on a particular topic and I haven't time to scan the feeds I have subscribed to using Bloglines and GoogleReader.

Pass it on

I have had a few instances where the customer has not had a pen drive or the pen drive is faulty when they have come to save their work. Twice now Google docs has come to the rescue after one of these instances I asked Mary Edwarsd-Read if she would like to find out more about it. I gave her a quick intro to Google docs showing her where to find it on her Google account and how to upload a document. She thought it was easy to do and very useful.

Library Thing and World Cat

Library Thing is a quick and easy way of cataloguing books, people use it to catalogue their own books or books they would like to read. Some groups put up records for their books. Authors and publishers also have a presence on the site. Their are some neat features including recommendations of books to read based on what you have catalogued and lists of who else has your books. You can share your library and conversely you can meet new people through the site by contacting those who have similar reading interests to your own. You can add tags, books covers, recommendations, ratings stars, and common knowledge information such as quotes, awards and honors, people and characters, book description to the books. Their are group forums and blogs and details of local libraries, book stors and book events. Book covers can be selected from those already on Library Thing or you can upload your own. Copy cataloguing information is added to your library from those titles already on Library Thing or by searching a list of major libraries your national library or search from for your local library's holdings. I found it quick and easy to use. Library Thing for Libraries pulls over provides a similar service for libraries sitting alongside your library OPAC running parallel with it.
WorldCat is OCLC's open catalogue and a competitor of LibraryThing for Libraries you can make lists, add tags, write reviews and find locations as an individual. It is much more than LibraryThing offering library management system. To get the product you need to subscribe to FirstSearch which includes the Wilson indexes. FirstSearch provides links from citations in one databse to full text articles in another and can fully integrate search results to your OPAC. Worldcat provides a whole cloud based operating system for libraries of which a really tantalizing feature is their interlibrary loan module.
Both Library Thing and WorldCat are ways of exposing your catalogue to the web rather than remaining in the deep web. As these two are competitors it would seem these two cannot co-exist in the same library system. WorldCat has a no third party plugins policy. Libraries need to balance the concerns raised by loosing control of data through OCLC control against the convenience of the product. WorldCat works with an EBSCO agregator to provide integrated searches of its articles enabling you to do a single search box.
Todays Library Library Liason session showed New Zealand applications of Library Thing for Libraries at Palmerston North and Nelson Public Library also AquaBrowser as used by Wellington and Auckland Public Libraries, Massey University as we have seen have Encore Summon was also mentioned.
Mentioned in passing where Facebook's Visual Bookshelf, Goodreads and Shelfari which are similar in concept to Library Thing. Project Gutenburg, the Internet archive and Open Library one page for everybook where also touched on.
Christchurch City Libraries is contemplating the future of our unsupported catalogue, some decisions on the route we will take towards a more open catalgue are just around the corner.

In the cloud computing Zoho writer and Google docs

In the cloud computing enables web applications for all sorts of things such as image editing word processing social networking and media creation. Users access software which is not on your own machine giving the advantage of not having to install and update software or scale up your computing grunt on your machine. The draw back is you normally can't back it up, you have to trust that it will be constantly available this is traded off against the ability to share and collaborate on documents enabling group work. Zoho writer and Google docs are two examples of in the cloud products which provide great alternatives for our customers using free internet computers. No need for extra hardware CDs and pen drives are redundant just upload from Microsoft to google docs or Zoho when your session is running low. They are also great for those who travel around with their tiny notebooks they don't have enough grunt to run Vista. It may not be economical to purchase wordprocessing software for small notebooks when their primary purpose is to access the internet and keep touch with those back home. I've briefly explore these before but didn't realise the full extent of applications that are available. I looked a word processing last time so I tried a slide show presentation. Google Docs takes a more spartan approach I found the background templates after I had started my presentation whereas Zoho's where right up front like in Microsoft. Both seem to do the job well enabling uploading and downloading to and from Microsoft office products. I managed to download presentations alright to powerpoint from each product and I then tried to upload them. I got Zoho show to upload to Google docs via a downloading to my computer and then uploading it.I've yet to have any luck getting the Zoho show presentation to upload to Google docs via the same route. Iuploaded a link from Zoho alright to my blog using the HTML gadget but its window a bit too small. The slideshow gadget didn't work even when I saved it as a slide show. No success yet in getting google docs test presentation onto the blog. I even managed to repeat this with Google docs must be getting the hang of this.
I've figured out how to add my Google docs presentation onto the blog, I had to publish it first. Apparently Zoho enables you to work offline on documents and spreadsheets and have these changes reflected directly in your Zoho account online which sounds great. Zoho and Google docs enable you to create things in Microsoft office nd save them directly into Zoho and to do the reverse.

Our other green flower

Our other green flower
Originally uploaded by canong2fan

Enjoy this stunning bloom blogged from Flickr.

Creating PBWorks pages

My PBWorks page was easier to find again than in MediaWiki listing under all pages or from front page of CCLlearn public Wiki then pages and files or all pages. It was also easier to use to create the page using the top right hand create a page icon. To build it go to the edit screen here you can change font and font colour and background, insert links using the globe, plugins such as google gadgets, slideshows and photos. A seperate sidebar also enables you to insert a link to a PBWorks page or to a new page where you get an option to insert a URL. A seperate folder in the sidebar allows you to insert images from a pop up URL box. The insert files option opens up window in My computer so you can navigate to your files and inserts a link to them in the sidebar.