More flickr fun - peaceful scene uploaded

Autumn leaves in the Adelaide Hills
Originally uploaded by apprentice_au

Well, that was interesting .. or scary, depending on how you look at it. I just joined Flickr, but it recognised my Yahoo I.D. and popped me straight in ... it seems the account I have at Yahoo includes Flickr ... hadn't realised that.

And it taught me how to say "G'day" in Basque as I entered .. "Kaixo" .. that amuses my mind, and humanises the site .. no accident, I'm sure.


This is a photo I took at a lovely old house up in the hills, a few autumns ago. It was on the hard drive of my own PC, and I uplifted it here via Flickr, giving Flickr approval to paste straight to my blog, a much easier process than that I've used in the past, which entailed getting a code from Photobucket which I pasted into the blank blog page I have on another site.


The blog seems to be set to wrap the text around the photo, and I would have preferred to be able to set the photo above, but the only way I coudl see to do it was a lot of carriage returns after the code for the photo, to establish the text far enough down the page for my liking. I will come back to Flickr in my own time and play with it some more, because it seems to have some possibilities that Photobucket doesn't have, e.g. editing is said to be a bit better, and if I wanted to, Flick can be used as a social networking tool. Not sure I am too fussed about that, though libraries with something pictorial to discuss could integrate photos and comment less easily than in a wiki, but with less worry about accidental deletion .. a worry for me, anyway. The other thing is that libraries could create a virtual library tour for someone who wasn't aware of our own webpage, though I suppose Marketing might have to vet content and how it was posted. Sample photos of facilities, for example a meeting room set up with equipment and some anonymous attendees could convey a better image than a mere list of room available for community use/hire.

Aha! a thought just struck me .. an unfurled photo of the program-specific banners would save wear and tear on the banners as potential users tried to decide whether to borrow this or that, and in fact a photo of each banner kept in a amall album where they are stored seems like a good idea ... and maybe one on each banner's Spydus record. Can Spydus import photos from Flickr? I will find out.

Also managed to create a link between a map of roughly where I think I took it to a photo above. Not sure how to link back to it, though .. will explore that later, but I think it would be great to be able to create a map of our campuses and have images linked to, in particular, the personnel or sample resources of the LRCs.

Flickr and photo sharing

I thought I knew a bit about about photo sharing, because I use photobucket quite a bit, mainly as a way of uploading my own photos, or other images I take a fancy to (legally allowed ones, that is) to a joint blog I am involved in. I have also encouraged family members to use it as a way of sharing photos "... the tinsel is still all over the floor, and here are the photos of the Xmas party for those half a world away ..." but Facebook has pretty much taken over that role for us, mainly because the only members of our family interested in the photos are also on Facebook. Facebook is less secure than photo sharing sites, IMHO but I have grey hair, what would I know about the Internet and security?

I had a look around flickr and the various tutorials today. I take the point in the commoncraft video (another thing I love about the Net) about backup of all one's precious photos onto something like Flickr, but it does sound like a lot of work .. I'm just a grasshopper regarding photos, not an ant.

I found some photos of a place we recently went camping at on Flickr before we set off to camp there, and so knew what it had looked like recently, and spotted a couple of nice vistas which we subsequently saw ... and made inferior photos of, of our very own.

Anyway, here's the link to the photo I chose from flickr:

This photo is available for anyone to see ... and so beautiful it makes me want to go to the Maldives ... now!

For the library, it could be a way to keep a progress blog of renovations, alterations, a way of showcasing particular architectural aspects of the LRC - we have a great comunity-created mural in our library that I'd love more people to appreciate ... since we saved it during the recent renovations ... as well as other promotional activities, displays. Library X's 2009 BookWeek display could be a spark for library Y's in 2010 and no need to save photos on our overworked servers.

I notice that the National Library invites the community to contribute images using Flickr, and has archived many ... this could be a useful adjunct to Local Studies collections.

Lecturers could set up resource banks of study-related images, and protect them so that only the audience they chose could see them.

Wikis .. just wikly

(Image obtained from here )
Thing No 8 - wikis. Lots of information here ... have been a fan of wikipedia for years but had not explored the wider wiki world - LOTS of information!

I see plusses and minuses in wikis - for example, spreading library news via wiki alone might be too targetted .. if I'm the one who has to go to the wiki and see what has been added I might not do it. On the other hand, it could be an archive of past news events etc, as well as having areas for people to collaborate, to have quizzes, website of the week, etc disseminated in a funkier way than my current very vanilla emails.

Lecturers / other staff might collaborate via wiki to develop ideas - you might get honest feedback if they think we can't track who posted. Some areas need to be monitored for appropriateness of content.

Traditional e-mail is cumbersome when you are working on a project with several people. Wikis are a way for everyone to "be on the same page." -- though only the techno-confident will try, and you don't have to know html, for example. The fact that the LRC runs a wiki might be enough to get others to have a go .. and raise our credibility in our colleagues' eyes.

It's the collaboration part that interests me, though easily edited work instructions, "how to use a " pages might be good - so long as only reliable people contribute. I understand that authoritative versions of pages can be restored, but that might take time.

I await with interest the evolution of wikis in the library world.

A week later : still thinking over wikis .. I hadn't really put this into words . one of hte things that's good about wikis as opposed to blogs, or rather one of the differences I suppose, is the non-linear nature of wikis, whereas blogs are chronological ... wikis are very much suited to a planning tool / ongoing set of instructions use.

Thing no 9 - have added some comments to the Sandbox page .. didn't get as far as adding photos, but I think I finally triumphed over colour and font changes ... the network gave me the irrits, as I thought changes had not stuck, handicapping myself when in fact I needed to be more patient.

Long time no post

Well .. it's been a while! My apologies. I got caught up with various things, including bronchitis, and have not been as dilligent as I'd like to have been. I had a successful see and share session with a lecturer, explaining how to access the catalogue from her desk, and then when I moved onto Movi things went haywire. Drew had already passed the Movi segment using the webcam on his PC, so I thought I'd log on as myself and use Movi there (the most convenient PC to use it for attending meetings when I can't get away to a VC room). That caused problems, which I now think were accompanied by a contemporaneous but probably unrelated problem with the webcam, which IT and VC staff were unable to fix. In the end, I had a second webcam donated to me by IT, and I think the actual problem may have been fixed by unplugging it and re-plugging it in.

However, all's well that ends well. I attended a meeting yesterday using Movi, and my apologies to the long-suffering folk also at the meeting - I thought I'd turned off my webcam mike, but apparently not, and they are much more sensitive than you'd think. *blush* I had to call VC help and we fixed the non-being-able-to-see-me problem, but they heard my muttered comments to him. I also found out to my dismay what a fidgety boots I am .. others sat beautifully still the whole time. We TV stars have a lot to learn!

That is quite enough of a brush with fame for me ... and now it's on to wikis!

Ooops, forgot to answer the questions: Did you enjoy communicating with colleagues this way? I did, and have learned a couple of htings, as above. It also enabled me to keep an eye on the LRC and helpa few students/staff when I was the only one there. I will work on why I couldn't use the PC that's closer to the Circ Desk. Did you have any problems? As above. Do you think this is a useful way for library staff to communicate across LEARN? Yes, in some circumstances, e.g. meetings where face-to-face is needed, though a lecturer was saying that she thinks Centra is sometimes more useful because you can share documents, videos, link to websites, etc. You can't see the others, though.

RSS feeds continued

I have seen in the last week that RSS feeds can be a great way to keep up with information in fields that you are interested in. The trick is identifying which blogs/sites one wishes to keep up with. I guess that's a matter of trial and error. I've found some LIS (Library and Information Science) ones interesting, and at home I'm keeping my eye on a couple of personal ones also.

I noticed also on some blogs that you can not only keep up with posts by the blogger, but with comments that may be added by others after you have read the blog, and which may add supporting or contrary opinions.

Will have to consult others this week about adding Page 2RSS to my browser toolbar ... perhas getting help via See'n'share, which is hte next brick in the 23 road. but I've added it to my favourites and managed to get it to work, notifying me of changes to a page that had no built in RSS link.

Will have to think about the suggested questions to blog about ... am just glad to have got as far as this!

Second post: Topic 4 -- RSS feeds

Well, it has been a log time between posts ... life has got in the way to some extent. However, I've re-jigged my planning as to when I'm going to do this, and hope to be a Better Blogger.

I've been doing this RSS feeds thing and have followed John Nebauer's advice and added way too many .. but I'll prune them, as he suggested, once I see which ones seem to take up too much brain time for the amount of payoff. I do see the usefulness of having the content come to me, rather than my having to seek it out, maintain a list of bookmarks, weed out the ones that are not so active, use them on ohter computers, etc etc.

My feeds are mainly from library related sites (other 23 things people, the ones suggested in the notes and a couple I found by myself) but I'll branch out and add a couple of general 'new technology" ones or ones related to program areas once I get better at finding what look like useful ones.
I'll be roaming other people's blogs bit by bit, looking for what you have discovered. Don't be offended if you are not on my 'followed' sites yet, I ran out of time, but would like to connect with others, as it is amazing at times what others see that one does not. For that matter, add a comment of you find something fab that you want to share ... please!