It was good to use the social searching tools, I knew of the existance of these sites before but I had never thought to actually use them. When I did have to sign up and think about a question to ask I realised how valuable this would be to be able to tap into the wisdom of so many people. Once I posted my question I was really looking forward to seeing the answers and was surprised at the quality and quantity that I got! It may be hard to varify answers based on facts, however I see people refering to other websites in their answers to back up what they are saying, it is also good to hear people's opinions and experiences. I can see a use for an answer board specifically for reference questions on the libraries website, with a librarian rostered for some time each day to answer the questions. Slamming the boards is a great idea to highlight the skills of librarians and it's great that people are out there doing this!

This week has taken me about 3 weeks to do but I have found it really useful and have used all these services quite a bit to work out exactly how I could use them. I thought delicious would be a really good tool for me to use as I am not always working at the same computer and do not always have the option to save the sites I like to use in favourties. It is great to be able to bookmark all my favourite sites so I don't forget about them or have to try and find them again through google. I thought Library Thing was also a great service that can be used for free which I enjoyed using myself and could recommend to patrons, I really liked that it recommended new books to read based on the books which I have read. I found them easy to add to my blog and I will definately use these two services in the future. Technorati I found a bit hard to use, the bookmobile search didn't really work for me but it is good to know that this service exists to search blogs as this seems to be something which we will be using alot more in the future.

This week was interesting, I have used you tube before but was new to google video. I have only used you tube for enertainment and was not sure if it would be that useful in a library environment. I think it could be quite expensive to produce a professional looking video to promote a library or to show patrons how to use services in the library. I could see it may work to film things like author visits or events but you would also have to be careful that you had the permission of everybody who was in the footage. It may also be frustating for patrons to use the video links from home as we have found using our own computers if your internet link is not quick enough it is very difficult to watch video footage. Patrons in this situationwill most likely give up if they have to watch a video to get the information, so it would need to be in text on the libraries website as well.

I have used wikipedia before and was aware that it can be edited by anyone and so have warned kids doing assignments not to take it as fact and to verify the information with something reliable like an encyclopedia or government website so I was suprised by the fact that a survey found it more accurate than the encyclopedia. After finding out more about how wikipedia works I see that for the amount of people who would post false information there would be so many more people to correct it!
I did not know that there were sites that can host a wiki for you or that they are so easy to set up. This would be great to use in a library or school environment, especially when you are able to have secure access as to who is allowed into the site and editors of the site are accountable for there posts.

This week took me a long time as I had no idea what an RSS feed was!, I have heard the term but I didnt know that it could be applied to the library environment in so many ways. Once I started going through this weeks activities I realised that things like dictionary.com's word of the day which I have subscibed to by email could be sent as an RSS to a feed reader. Learning about the existance of feed readers will come in handy to manage this and any other interesting feeds i find. I also checked some other libraries websites which have RSS feeds which patrons can subscibe to and found many different feeds like book lists, library news, and events.

Mosaico de ventanas en Muestra tu México

Mosaico de ventanas en Muestra tu México
Originally uploaded by Lucy Nieto

Took awhile but I finally signed up for Flickr and worked out how to add a photo to a blog. Flickr seems like a very useful website and I am glad I took the time to learn how to use it. I chose this collage of photo's from mexico to remind me of my last holiday!, looking forward to going back!, love the colours and the mosaic effect ,will have to look at how to do this!, I will now move on to trying to upload my own photos, wish me luck!