Man of Constant Sorrow

Had a good browse around YouTube, which I was already familiar with and tried to add a video of the above song by The Soggy Bottom Boys (a song I love from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou which I also love) but it didn't work for some reason (error on page) and I even googled the right way to do it, but this didn't work either.

YouTube is great for looking up old videos and golden moments and seeing new artists whose videos are not shown here for whatever reasons. I'm not sure what features could be used for library websites, apart from "how to" videos for people wanting to know how to use the catalogue or the self check machines or such like. Unfortunately people who would be likely to go on our website and watch a video would probably have no trouble with using electronic applications.

Music heaven

This week I have had a look at 3 Web 2.0 Awards winners - the first 3 in the music category. The first "Last" is a pretty, flashy site with lots of photos and offering lots of music videos to sample (through YouTube). It offers a search engine to match you up with new music according to what you already like. I typed in The Dixie Chicks and it came up with a list of other female country artists - many of whom I already knew the music of, but others who were new to me. It was good to have some new ones to try although it was a pretty blunt instrument in terms of matching tastes - as I guess it could only be.

Next I tried Pandora, the second place getter, but it said it was unavailable to the world outside the US.

Thirdly I tried Mog (whose subtitle is "because the web mostly sucks"). This is interesting informative and thoughtful and it would make a nice complement to Last. I think I will definitely use these sites again. I think they could be used by libraries to locate other suitable titles to purchase if a particular genre is popular in a particular library. In our library it could be useful in finding more music suitable for playing in our library - soft but not too boring.

So much for Zoho

Actually the Zoho writer will be very useful for me as I often use a laptop on which Word has not been installed. I can now use this to create documents when I need to.

I managed to publish my book review document to my blog after a few hiccups. I used the FAQs link to clarify the procedure and hey presto! it worked. Unfortunately I had been so focussed on this that I did not remember to do a pretty coloured font or anything else to make it beautiful, but I know I could in future.

Hello

Hello library colleagues

 

This is my first Zoho writer document.  I intend to use it to give a short book review for a book I have recently finished, called "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred D. Taylor, and which I am pleased to see is still in our library system despite being published in 1976.  It is the middle book in a trilogy but can be read as a stand-alone.  It tells the story of an African-American family in the Deep South in America in the 1930s and the racism and consequent difficulties they encounter in their everyday lives, told from the point of view of Cassie, a girl of about 10.  It is a good reminder of how far attitudes in US society have changed in less than a century, particularly now they have their first black president in Barack Obama.  It also reminds us why there are still people alive in the US who said they could never bring themselves to vote for a black man. 

Caught in the social net - #17

This week I have created a profile on Facebook and have visited Bebo to have a look at the Auckland Library page among other things. A couple of months ago I set up a profile on MySpace as well but I have decided to cancel it as I could not find a single person on it that I knew, either from NZ or from my friends overseas! However, just by signing up I immediately had 2 friends, one looked like a friend allocated to me by MySpace itself and the other was a NZ network in the US. Nice to know you're never alone on MySpace!! I've sent out several requests for friends on Facebook just from people who were in my email address book. Very interesting.

The Hennepin County Library site on Facebook was an interesting idea - using the interest in the community (particularly the young community) for social networking to promote library matters and as a point of easy and convenient access.