Ponderings on a wet Sunday

Whilst I'm tucked up in bed with my laptop on this wet and windy Sunday, I find my myself thinking about how overwhelming life has become. We now have such extraordinary access to information that it's led to a feeling of information overload. I have enough trouble keeping on top of my paper filing at home let alone trying to handle the abundance of information I'm privy to through such technologies like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, RSS , Email, Blogs and more that I now find myself asking what on earth did we do prior to the Internet? One thing comes to mind - we were more relaxed! We could happily kick back with the weekend newspaper, cuppa in hand without that niggly feeling we should be blogging, tweeting, updating our Facebook status, adding photos to Flickr for our friends and family to view or catching up with the thousand or so feeds on our Google Reader. I'm not sure why but I feel a sense of guilt whenever I spend more time than is necessary on the Internet. But how long, you may ask, is considered a 'necessary' amount of time - after all it's all choice, or is it? We talk about work/life balance but what about online/offline balance? How do we measure this? Is it when you're getting sore from being hunched over the computer and your arm feels like it's about to drop off? Or when your house looks like you've had a party which in reality you didn't have because you deemed it more important to spend hours playing Bejewelled or some other brain training, mind altering, hand-eye coordinating game! About all of this I'm not too sure except that for the moment, even just for a little while, I'm going to 'sign out' and return to offline reality.

Twitter

Just decided to create a Twitter account. Not sure how much I'll use it though.
http://twitter.com/AmyRossiter
Still, knowing how quickly I became addicted to Facebook there's every chance I'll use it frequently!

My Personal Leadership Style

Thanks and Yay!

Just wanted to say a big thanks again to Jason on two fronts: for putting together the great 23 Things program and for pulling my name out of the box last Friday - looking forward to spending my $100 voucher! Any feedback on how to spend it is welcomed...!

Library 2.0 and reflections

Since I attended a presentation from Stephen Abram back in October 2006, the concept of Library 2.0 has been at the forefront of my mind. Utilising Google during a reference inquiry is certainly one important element of Library 2.0 but encouraging people to share and interact is a more overriding theme. I've created a Delicious account for everyone to use as a point of reference on the Information Desk. This allows everyone to share the webpages to which they commonly refer to during an inquiry. In my view, it is very important that as librarians we are aware of advances in technology and embrace change. However that said, it's extremely important not to adopt change for change's sake.

I've really enjoyed working through the 23 Things program and would like to thank Jason for all his work. I will continue to use many of the things in the course of my day-to-day work as a TAFE librarian. Stay tuned as this is by no means the last of my posts...

Google Maps

I'm a bit old school when it comes to using online maps (not too sure if 'old school' and 'online' go together..!) Although I've used Google Maps before, I tend to refer to www.street-directory.com.au when requiring directions - guess it's out of habit. Google Street View is a bit scary privacy-wise - you can even see our car parked on the street out the front of our place. Guess it might be useful when we eventually want to buy a new house...

More Google!

How many more Google products can there be? Heaps is the answer and here I will tell you my thoughts on Google Book Search and iGoogle! I quite like the concept of iGoogle but to be honest, my Facebook page acts as my homepage outside of work. I guess it's like all of the vast array of Web 2.0 products - it's all a matter of changing our past habits with regards to the way we interact with the Internet and PCs. I also feel it's very important not to use Web 2.0 products just for the sake of it.

What can I say about Google Book Search... Again it's all about changing one's habits. Think I'll need to investigate this product a little further before I can really comment. I think it could come in handy when trying to determine whether or not to purchase a title for our collections. I'm so used to checking items on JBO and BookFind and have become quite familiar with their search interfaces. They also provide me with an $AU and let's face it in the end it's all about the $$$$!