Blog activity 7 – comment on your teachers blog

I have made a comment on the "Library ponders twitter's historical value" post.

Investigative Exercise 7 Podcasts

This podcast is from an author event at The State Library of NSW, where Kate Lllewellyn, an award winning Australian poet, reads from her memoir "The Dressmakers Daughter".
Link to podcast

Blog activity 6 – commenting on other blogs

I have made a few comments on Michael's blog and have asked to be invited to comment on other....still waiting ..busy people....aha now I have slao made some comments on Joanne's.

Investigative Exercise 6 Social Bookmarking

Sadly, The City of Sydney Library does not have book reviews on its website, which surprised me. Not only, do book reviews provide another way to assist clients to select items (especially those that are housebound) but by providing an arena for clients to post their own reviews it further cements the library as an interactive part of the community, which has got to be good.

I would imagine, however, that there would have to be some kind of protocol to review the reviews (ie. "blotting out" of expletives if used) which could be viewed as somewhat censorshiporial....hmmm.... contentious....

Blog activity 5 – inviting people to be authors on your blog

Finally!! Got myself some e-mails.....

Investigative Exercise 5 Social Networking

I think it's great that libraries are becoming a part of the social networking phenomena. In order for any organisation (let alone a library) to best serve its community it must keep up with its community. It's vital that a library is seen to be doing this.

Social networking is a fabulous and fun way to engage in a demographic (predominantly gen y-ers) and others in a non traditional means. It provides another access point to a library's services and enables information to be be delivered directly to individuals, such as book reviews, events, event invitations, new books list, etc.

Investigative Exercise 4 Youtube

Sandy Smith of The John McIntire Library reads "If You'll Be My Valentine" by Cynthia Rylant.

Blog Activity 4 – changing the arrangement of your blog

Aha....so simple! I've moved a few things around. I also added a calendar gadget. The calendar is not very pretty though....might have to do some further fiddling.

Not sure that I like that it contains an add either!

...and then I made the calendar go away to be replaced by my cats...

Blog activity 3 – changing the colour of your blog

I could spend hous happily playing around with colour and design!

I altered some of the background colours, as well as some of the text colours. I really like dark colours, whch can lead to difficulties (as dark on dark does not read well), so I changed a lot of the text sizing and made some colour related compromises here and there.

Blog activity 2 – embedding a video

Investigative Exercise 2 Slideshare

Libraries and Dewey Decimal Classification

View more presentations from North Bend Public Library.

This is a colourful and dynamic slideshow designed to teach library staff and library volunteers about the Dewey Decimal Classification system of organising library items.

Investigative Exercise 3 Photo sharing and Flickr

Another fabulous library cat.

Investigative Exercise 1 : Blogs

Ultimo Tafe Library Blog

I like the design of this blog. There are useful links and you can even renew library loans via this blog!

Blue Mountains City Library Blog

This blog has lots of interesting historical information and photos of the Blue Mountains. It also has socal studies bookmarks.

Parramatta City Library

The books in the background look great. The blog has book reviews and discussion ideas for various books.

Blog Activity 1 – Images