answer boards and librarians

I found week eight's focus on answer boards interesting, particularly regarding 'slamming the boards' and its ability to demonstrate the reference skills of librarians. Looking at some of the "exemplary answers" listed on the Answer Board Librarians wiki, the attention and detail that has gone into answering queries is quite impressive....with a significant number of librarians taking part the potential is huge.

Feedback from library users regarding collection content or services offered by the library could work well provided users were adequately informed as to how to go about it. Customers could review books in the library's collection based on their usefulness (for research purposes, for example)....a link to reviews could then perhaps be added to the an item's catalogue entry...

delicious etc

It took me a short while to understand delicious and what it offers users....I think its application does going beyond simply being just an easy means of creating bookmarks accessible from any computer (although this in itself is a fantastic tool). As the the Learning2.0 notes implicate, delicious is extremely user friendly as a research tool, however, you would need to combine its use with other more established means of research...
In terms of display, delicious is straightforward to navigate. Searching options don't require much explanation and the tagging of bookmarks assists immensely in locating relevant information. I guess to a degree you are relying on other users adequately tagging bookmarks if you're to find what you're after...
technorati I found more difficult to navigate than delicious and I'll admit it took me some time to fully grasp....

regarding wikis

While familiar with wikipedia as something of a research tool (bearing in mind that not everything is 100% accurate) I'd never edited a wiki prior to this week's exercise... At this stage I'm still waiting for the invite key so that I can contribute to the nsw learning 2 wiki but I did have a look at a number of the wikis mentioned in the week 5 notes.
Wookieepedia is a fascinating wiki if only for the seemingly endless amount of information regarding the most trivial aspects of the star wars universe - that said, star wars seems perfect content for a wiki given the information available through films, books etc....most people outside of devoted star wars fans would probably feel a bit intimidated contributing to wookieepedia, but then I'm guessing that's who it's aimed at.
I thought that the BookLovers wiki was a great idea for public libraries - it gives members of book clubs a wider scope for discussing their books outside of face-to-face meetings and would be especially useful if individuals weren't able to make face-to-face meetings and still wanted to enter into and contribute to the discussion.
Obviously with some wikis, as can be seen by the Mint Museum wiki, who edits the information is decided by the people responsible for the establishment of the wiki. As we've seen with wikipedia, information can and has been added incorrectly (often blatantly) - so perhaps this isn't such a bad idea (although it does kind of run contrary to the whole idea of a wiki as being freely available to edit)....

week four - rss

I found RSS to be a great tool - the exercise was largely enjoyable, searching for feeds to add to my bloglines acount. The ABC News: World RSS feed is one that I added, for reasons of self-interest perhaps but also as it was a feed I knew would get daily updates...
I didn't spend a large amount of time looking for RSS feeds, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to add in addition to the requisite powerhouse museum photo of the day feed....One is a feed from the official website of a professional sporting team - entries here are displayed with images. It is a much, much easier way of reading the latest news regarding the team than going to the website itself....

berowra to apple tree bay

I had a little trouble getting a photo from flickr onto the blog so here's the link instead

**Link removed due to the photo no longer being available

The photo was one of the official Oxfam photos taken during the trailwalker and was not taken by me (I did have a camera with me on the day but fatigue quickly replaced any thoughts of taking photos along the trail)

beneath the cold dark waves

It's all a bit new but with a little effort and exploration this should be a fun experience...
My initial refelections on the LL 2.0 program are pretty positive, it looks interesting and relevant to my study and work. And not too daunting...
Blogging could certainly have a place in public libraries, perhaps most effectively if it's aimed at particular users, young adult readers for example...