Very Good Reads

Love this site - a bit like Library Thing. Kind of a book lovers heaven! I even found 2 people I knew on it. I can see myself recommending this to a couple of keen readers, although they're both older ladies who may have a limited tolerance for computer applications. I'll try though..

Twying to twitter

Twitter was OK to sign up with but diabolical when I tried to figure out how to send a tweet. I even googled instructions and went on youtube to get help, but in the end realised I was getting tied up with the language, and it was really quite easy in the end. Although I didn't trust I had done it right until I saw my emails the next day.
I chose Stephen Fry and Margaret Atwood to follow. I quickly had more tweets than I ever wanted to see from Stephen Fry, and could see that Margaret Atwood was using twitter to communicate with the students in her class, rather than say anything profound, although that is a bit of a snap judgement on my part.
I can see that twitter could be a good discussion tool for staff who can hardly ever get together for meetings, although email can do this too. I guess Manukau Libraries would probably use this in the same way as a blog, to promote things, and to discuss books. I might recommend it to people who wanted to follow the thoughts of their favourite authors or movie stars, but it wouldn't be a daily sort of thing I don't think. And I doubt I'll continue with it - just not enough hours in the day...

Zamzar (or Jamjar as I will remember it)

This is a genuinely useful application! Just a pity it takes a day to work, or it would be very helpful to our customers in the Learnnet, with their saved documents that won't open on our computers - and they're always urgent and vitally important! Still will be useful to some who can wait until the next day...
I converted a lovely interloan instruction sheet into a pdf and it was as simple and straightforward as everything in life should be. Yay for Zamzar.

Well hello (again) ...

I'm happy this is a much shorter programme than last time as I prefer to be able to do it at work rather than home (because I'm not paid enough!). I think a public library could use a blog but I'm not sure how useful or well used it would be (except for those whose job it is to write on it!) - maybe in special areas like teens or as an informal book club. I guess if people logged on to a public library blog they might expect information on events and new books and resources, although most would be used to getting this information from somewhere else.