I am not doing a detailed review of these sites, just commenting after a quick look and in terms of how useful they might be to school librarians who need a way of displaying or accessing their stock from their website.

Also, bear in mind that our library stock is very small at the moment – only 2700 items. Out of the three sites, only LibraryThing asked for a subscription as it has a limit of 500 items.

So, here are the results of trying these out:

LibraryThing
On the site, widgets are very customisable, which is nice. The issue I have is that if you upload old books, then LibraryThing puts in a generic cover, if it cannot find the real one. The generic cover is not very pretty! I have, however, been able to upload the catalogue complete with the keywords – which have gone in LibraryThing’s “tags” field. As I originally exported the catalogue records into Excel, I was able to add the Dewey number into the “tag” field as well. With some books, again old ones, it cannot find details, so they are not uploaded. You can do lots of activities on LibraryThing, such as add reviews, join groups and so on. I had thought of using the site for my Reading Group then realised that, as most of them are under 13, the site rules say that they cannot join. So I am using a wiki for this.

GuruLib

Recent books from My Library

powered by Gurulib

Gurulib seems to be a lot more basic than the other two, some of the books were not recognised, but uploading the file went very smoothly and more quickly than the other sites. I have not yet spent much time exploring the site.

Shelfari

An interesting thing about making the Shelfari widget is that you have the option to choose a tag – this would enable a lot of flexibility. The site did allow me to upload the entire catalogue, although I did have some problems initially with getting the upload to go on to the correct “shelf”! Again, I have the problem with the unrecognised books that ended up with weird covers – but if I had the time, I could scan in the real ones.

What do you think?

I did finish the course, although I skimmed over the last few presentations and did not post very much to the discussions. This was because my personal life was encroaching too much and I was feeling under pressure.

I will return to the presentations at a later date and think through how I am going to move forward and feed back to the school. As I am new in post, I am not sure of the best way to do this, or, in fact, whether I should just wait for a more appropriate time. My main focus now has to be on developing the new library, getting it up and running in the autumn and then starting the process of encouraging teachers to make use of it and myself. So it may not be until this time next year that I can actually begin to use some of the amazing things that I have learned.

In the meantime, I will continue to try out these things for myself, and maybe draw up a plan of action. I can use tools such as VoiceThread with my Reading Group, perhaps. And, of course, I can enjoy using them in the library website.

Via Twitter, I saw a link to this downloadable book “21st Century Technology Tools : Tutorials“. It looks really useful for helping teachers and others who are not very confident about using a lot of Web2.0 – and in fact I will read some of the chapters myself!

When I have had more time for reflection, I may post some more about the course.

The podcasting presentation was excellent and I feel that I could try this out, when the opportunity presents itself. I have saved the presentation and also all of the links so that I can return to it later on.

I also dropped in on the “chat” session just to see that it works OK before our session at 8.00 pm tonight. If I have the energy, I may add to this post after that.

This afternoon, I tried the session on The Seamless School Library – well, that had me bowled over but totally drained at the same time. This is not a quick Word document or a .pdf, but a whole website to explore. It was too much for an afternoon – trying to fit this between the normal library stuff. I am also getting quite tired as I have been staying up too late reading stuff and then I cannot sleep as so much is whirring around my head!

Anyway, I will again come back to that section at a later date as I cannot cope with it today.

So, I spent some time working on the Library Online website. Having watched the social bookmarking presentation, I was reminded that I could use the “link rolls” script from Delicious to show visitors to the Subject pages the latest links for each subject that I have added to Delicious. I have only made a few of these pages as yet, because I have not reached the point where I am working closely with teachers. I just made these as examples – although the English one is starting to develop because the Sixth Form students are starting to ask me for help – wonderful!

Update: What great fun it was chatting to other school librarians on Meebo last night. Now I can see why teenagers get so addicted to MSN! Then I spent some time setting up Skype and got through to a friend in Australia. I still feel so starry-eyed by the power of technology! Maybe that is why I chose the picture below as my main avatar!

Anyway, I will carry on following her as I pick up so many ideas from influential librarians like her!

David’s presentation, and the live session, was really amazing. I now know that I love something that has the human voice as well as a visual presentation! Although this kind of media center would not be possible or very appropriate in my present school, it was wonderful to see the things that are possible elsewhere.

Also, I must admit that I find I am still able to be awed by the power of technology! Whereas students have grown up with this, and so very rarely get that wow factor, I say “Wow” all of the time. From someone who used a dip-pen then later a sliderule at school to this…

…truly awesome!

Anyway, back to the presentation. Again, I don’t think that I found out a lot of new stuff as I have been using both Delicious and Diigo for some time. But it did remind me of some things and introduced me to some new terms. I have favourited it on SlideShare and will return to it at a later date to think about it some more. I was interested in the RISAL project and will certainly explore that more when I have the time.

The second presentation : “The Os of Web 2.0: Openness, Originality and Others” is in PDf format and I have downloaded it and printed it out to read. I find it difficult to read long articles like this these days as they take a lot of concentration and I don’t really get the space and time for that – at school, everything is very busy; at home – well, mayhem would be a good word! Also, I am not used to it – I think that I am out of practise these days.

Anyway, I have begun a bubbl.us to show my learning network (I have used this before to create a sitemap for my Library Online site – although this needs updating).

I started the day thinking about participation on the course. A lot of SLN members from the UK have joined and yet I could see only a handful online and posting comments. Also it was apparent that many people were struggling with Sosius before they could actually get to work on the course. So I decided to  write a quick guide to getting started and then I uploaded it to a couple of areas and notified everyone – I hope that it helps.

Also, thinking about all of the wonderful resources mentioned in the posts, I had begun to tag them on Diigo for myself and so I thought that it would be helpful to others if I offered to do this for everyone. Now, I know that it is a huge task and may be a bit impossible to achieve successfully. But I will try to do it as best I can.

So, to the actual course. What did I learn yesterday? I have only just begun my new job and the focus for my first year must be on designing and developing the new library. It is such a small school and so it is easy to talk to staff face to face. However, I have also been given the remit that I will help the school develop ICT in the future. I hope that I have opportunities to show some of these Web2.0 tools to staff – maybe at a training day. So, I will take the chance to learn as much as I can and try to suggest things to teachers where appropriate. I will also use the Library Online website to demonstrate some of them also and maybe develop a wiki for the Reading Group. Then I will have some practical examples to show.

We are in a difficult situation when a lot of the staff do not read their official emails! But I will have to try to find my way around this. So these are my thoughts about the presentation on professional development for staff with Web2.0.

As to the other presentation on mashups! This was a really steep learning curve for me. At least I think that I understand a little more about what they are, but I couldn’t get to grips with Yahoo Pipes. Maybe that was because I was trying to do this in too much of a hurry. It is difficult to make the mental space and time at home on an evening, when my boys are fighting me for the computer!

I will have to come back to this at a later date, when I can find a quiet time to really concentrate!

It has been interesting to read what others are doing, although I don’t feel that I have personally found much that is totally new to me so far. What is different is the ability some people have to use new technologies in their schools, either because they are teacher-librarians or because of the ethos of their particular school. So, I have heard of wikis etc before and have tried some of the tools myself, but not had much opportunity to use them in a teaching context – apart from the wiki I used at NCTC.

My present school is a very academic one and I am not sure as yet when I will be able to start encouraging the use of Web2.0. I did try with one department and gave them a detailed list and offered help – but there was no response.

I am supposed to be getting involved in ICT development in the school, when I have got the new library up and running – so maybe I will get more chance then.

|What I have tried out today is VoiceThread – this laptop has a microphone, so I was able to add some voice comments to someone else’s presentation. I would like to make one myself, so may try this out soon. Not sure what I will do as yet.

I remember many years ago a lot of school librarians doing online ICT training (can someone remind me what it was called?). This, however, is a huge step further as we are taking part alongside school librarians, teachers, ICT specialists and many others from across the globe. Exciting times!

First of all, we need to get to grips with Sosius – an online collaboration tool. I am feeling my way around this and have made contact with most of the participants in the course. Also, I have now posted a few comments to discussions.

I will be blogging here, hopefully on a daily basis, throughout the course to show the progress that I am making!

I am having a lot of fun with the school library website. It has been started as a way of tracking the development of the Library as it is refurbished and also offering a service to the school when the current library stock is not of a standard to really meet the needs of the staff and students. It has been gratifying that so many school librarians have seen the site and have used it as an exemplar of what can be done. I also think that I can use the site to create a bit of a “wow factor” by utilising lots of Web2.0 gadgets and widgets to catch the eye.

These are being used in an educational way (honest) but also as a bit of fun. I chose a theme for the site that has a sidebar at each side of the main page. That way there is enough room to add in a range of widgets. I have moved them around a bit and tried a range of services.

So what are the main Web2.0 services that I am using? The left sidebar is mainly about the Library Online website itself:

• The top two widgets are just text that I use to explain the site and put on the latest news about the site.
• Then comes a widget with my Twitter feeds. I have to make sure that I use direct messages for personal conversations as the Twitter feeds need to look professional for the site. They are a great way of adding instant news updates to the site. I am Dixie_library on Twitter, by the way!
• The next six widgets are those generated for a WordPress blog that enable visitors to see the page structure, recent posts, recent comments, categories and tags. These help a visitor to navigate the site.
• Under this is more fun stuff. I have found that our students are fascinated to see where the visitors to our site are coming from – this is especially important as we are have International School Award. So I have put in widgets from Feedjit and Clustrmaps to show all of this.
• Below this are a range of widgets. The Educator’s Calendar from Widgetbox is used as I wanted to show events from around the world. I am not entirely satisfied that this is the best source as yet. Then a weather widget (also from Widgetbox) for our nearest town – Hinckley – shows how cold it is today! A badge for the TeacherLibrarian network and administrative tasks finishes this sidebar.

The right sidebar is more about the Library itself and also the public library etc.:

• First of all a text widget which will show current activities such as the recent National Year of Reading and currently the Times Books for Schools.
• Secondly, a widget that shows the photographs of our Library that I have uploaded to Flickr. I have done this so that I can show the development of the Library from this baseline year going forward into the future.
• Below this is another text widget with quick facts about the Library.
• Then I have put in a box with a link to a Meebo account. This may be a bit risky, but I have been reading about libraries who are using Instant Messaging with their customers and I am trying it out. I may find that another service will give me more control as I am a little concerned about misuse. What do you think?
• In the absence of an online catalogue, I am using LibraryThing to show the books that we have at present – the only issue I have is updating this as I think that I need to delete all records on it and re-import them regularly as we are buying a lot of new stock and withdrawing a huge amount at present. Anyway, this is shown in the sidebar.
• There are then some other reading-based widgets with favourite authors, a link to reading development websites tagged on Diigo, and a book review finder – which is a Google custom search engine.
• I have also highlighted our local public libraries in Leicestershire and Warwickshire (where most of our students and staff live) with links to their online catalogues and to the online subsciption services that they offer. Our local branch is also advertised here to encourage use by our school.
• Following this are three more widgets – firstly showing our Delicious tags: I have built these up over a long time and am in the process of adding new ones to support our staff and students. I use Delicious now for our curriculum and Diigo for professional links. Next is a link to SlideShare, where I upload any presentations that I think would be of interest. Last of all a link to Wordle, which I find fascinating – I keep trying to get teachers to use this – but no luck at the moment!

So, this has been a very long post, but I wanted to explain what I am trying to achieve at the front end of the site. Ideas for development are very welcome – please let me know if you have found better alternatives!

New website for a new library!

I have looked at and read about lots of CMSs, including Drupal and Joomla! But I don’t think that my technical skills are really up to learning these at the moment. So, as I am reasonably comfortable with WordPress, I sorted myself out a new blog. Then I read some more, posted on some more forums and nings and decided to try a hosted Wordpress blog instead. I only set it up today and there are a few teething problems already. But, I will give it a go and post again when I have some news…

Non-blogging with a blog!

… it is fun finding themes and other stuff to put on the blog. I am trying to find ideas as to how to use it both for news and in a non-blog way. There are a lot of ideas out there…

…let’s see if it works!