Genealogy sites

Found some great new sites for genealogy today - the 1911 Irish Census http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search
and the Victorian Government Gazette http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/

Tweeting not just for the birds...

I have 7 followers on Twitter! I am amazed, and know not what to say! Some of them are even people who don't know me and therefore didn't have to be 'encouraged' to follow!

A little goes a long way

So Saturday I learnt that a 1kg bag of flour goes a long way when it is hurled into the pantry a tad too enthusiastically. My poor mother - I know she's not well but that little tanty did her no good at all. Spent the rest of the day cleaning up - it went everywhere!! Very impressive - and quite funny (at least, after all the cleaning was done).

Twitter

Further to my efforts to reconnect to the current century (!!) I have also discovered Twitter, where I am using the name TorieLib. I like the immediacy of tweeting, although I think it will be a loooong time before I catch up with High Country Library (who I am following) who are listed as the most popular public library in Australia on Twitter, and number 140 Public Library in the world.

Ohhhhhh dear, it has been a disgracefully long time since I have updated this thing. I will attempt to crawl my way back into the 21st century. Not good.

Thoughts on Learning 2.0

I'm really glad I have done this course, although finding time was rather difficult, and I certainly did not give everything the time and attention it deserved. I could have spent hours exploring to wonders before me - but I have all my notes and will revisit many of the sites I have bookmarked - using del.icio.us, of course!
I definitely want to make use of blogs and wikis, both internally amongst library staff and with our patrons. My catalogue of books is growing on LibraryThing, my del.icio.us bookmarks and tags are growing almost daily, and I LOVE the bloglines - it saves me heaps of time. Others are just plain FUN to play with - flickr, image generators, the list goes on.
Thanks to all the staff who kept encouraging each other to keep going with Learning 2.0, even when time was tight and we had to move on before we were ready - we will have to do an update and refresher soon!

Week #9 - podcasts, video and downloadable audio

Podcasts were good, but loaded very slowly on my poor old chugging computer. This is probaby the one week where I had actualy discovered a fair bit of this myself - especially the audio (I LOVE my I-pod). YouTube I have played with a fair bit over the past few months, too, but the World E-book Fair was a bit of an eye-opener, and I know I will be revisiting that site a fair bit.

A long gap between blogs

It had been a disgracefully long time since my last blog - in the meantime I have done a 5 day OH&S course, a 4 week course on answering genealogy questions for library staff, and (more or less) kept up with my general job. It has certainly been exciting!!

On to week 9!

Week #8 - a comment on Zoho

Below is my first Zoho document - a quick play around with some of the basic features of the program. The ease with which I posted it into my blog was amazing, although the two pictures I included do not seem to have come through properly (this may just be my computer). I was even able to go in and edit the document in the blog, which was very handy. From a "publish on the internet" point of view I really like this, although I'm not convinced it will replace Microsoft Office - but I could be wrong!! Lets go back and see what else I can do!
Cheers

Week #8 - Zoho ; First try

Whoo-hoo - isn't this cute. Lets just press a few of these buttons and see what this thing can do!!

This is my favourite cat photo (thanks FlickR) and i have managed to add a comment to the image - just point on the photo to see.

OK - what else can I do???

PRETTY COLORS

AND BACKGROUND COLORS

Fonts, fonts, fonts, and more fonts

Bold, italics, inderline, strikethrough, ^superscript, _subscript, all the usual bits and pieces I can do in a normal work document.

I don't mind the toolbar, although with the internet explorer toolbars at the top there is rather a lot of stuff to look at. I think the biggest adventage of this is the ease of sharing and multiediting features. Time to save and see if I can link this into my blog.

Week #7 - Wikis

Despite the pressures of time (see my previous rant), I'm really glad I have taken on this course, as so much of what we have covered I will keep using. Just about all my bookmarks are now on del.icio.us (very timely, as I worked at Tongala branch Saturday, needed one of my sites and found it quickly using del.icio.us - thanks!), and I really enjoyed the wikis this week. I loved the Book Lovers Wiki from Princeton Public Library and would like to do something similar for us - it would be fantastic for readers advice. My main reservation is the lack of control (yes, OK, control-freak tendencies here) but being able to restrict access and track changes would help prevent abuse or inappropriate use. I have browsed through several of the wiki hosts and it would certainly be possible to set something up. I shall cogitate further.

I have succesfully managed to link my blog into the Learning 2.0 wiki - shall have to check that I am not getting all the update e-mails - think I may have neglected to untick the notify box. Ooops!

Ok, the phone has rung again - that was my FIFTH phone call while typing this - I think I had better give up for now.....

Time - where has my day gone???

Time!! There is NEVER enough of it. The 7.5 Habits of Lifelong Learning don't say anything about finding the time to actually LEARN!!
Habit 1 - Begin with the end in mind - and make sure you have the time for the journey
Habit 2 - Accept responsibility for your own learning - and for finding the time to DO the learning
Habit 3 - View problems as challenges - Yes, the problem of time is definitely a challenge
Habit 4 - Confidence - I am confident I WILL find the time ; it will just be challenging!
Habit 5 - Learning toolbox - Well I did PUT time management as one of the tools in by toolbox back in week 1
Habit 6 - Useing technology - yes, it CAN save time. And when it is't jolly working properly, it can sure waste a fair bit of it too
Habit 7 - Teach and mentor - sometimes I spend so long teaching and mentoring I run out of time to do stuff myself
Habit 7.5 - Play - it I had the time to play with all this wonderful new stuff I am learning as much as I want to, I probably wouldn't be griping about TIME!!!

I'm out of time - more later

Week #6 - del.icio.us

This was entirely too much fun - I really like this concept. The next time my computer is upgraded at work, there will be NO chance I will again lose all my bookmarks - they will all be found at del.icio.us/TechnoToria Well some of them can be found there already - and now that I have managed to get the del.icio.us buttons on my toolbar, I will progressively add to them over the next few weeks. Even better - the next time I am working at another computer and can't remember an address I want to get into, I will still have access to my bookmarks!!

Cheers

Week #5 part 3 - Rollyo

Not too sure about this from a "library patrons coming in asking questions" perspective, but personally see the use - searching several trusted websites at once without the irrelevant guff coming up.
I have created a few searchrolls and put a link on my toolbar - I will see how much use I make of it. I have a feeling it just might grow on me.......

Week #5 part 2 - LibraryThing

Now this was fun!! Worked much better too! My list can be accessed at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ToriaG

I only have a few titles listed for now, but can anticipate becoming seriously addicted to it. I particularly like being able to choose which book cover to display - so I can actually show the cover of the edition I own!

Week #5 - Image Generator

After playing around with the image generators I have come to the conclusion that our internet connection here is too slow - I keep losing things and timing out and not uploading properly and am sure the level of muttering is unsettling other staff. Sorry everyone!!

Usualy technology behaves for me, so I have tried to be patient and persist with it today - at least this one (kind of) worked.

Cheers

Bloglines

I have just been back into my Bloglines account, caught up on all the new posts by fellow staff, created 2 new folders (news and movies) and subscribed to a few sites for each. I really like this concept - you don't have to keep going into blogs etc you have visited before only to find nothing new - this tells you when there is new content/new posts and takes you straight to them. How clever is that!

I have tried to visit and leave a comment on the blogs of fellow staff at Campaspe this week - it is nice to find some feedback on your thoughts. Learning 2.0 has generated a lot of comment by staff, and I think we are all finding the same main problem - simply finding the time to get everything done!

Cheers

Week #4 - RSS

I have just completed the Week 4 activity and now understand what RSS feeds and Bloglines are. Isn't technology WONDERFUL. I think I have even managed to make my blogroll public - here's the link
http://www.bloglines.com/public/TechnoToria

I even managed to put the links into two folders, one that is general and a libraries folder that has all the blogs of my fellow staff at Campaspe Regional Library. I even feel I understood what I was doing!!

How good is that!!

Week #3 part 2 - Favourite photo

Over the past few days I have been shamelessly stealing images to include in a powerpoint presentation I have been putting together for an upcoming Genealogy expo I will be attending.

Above is an image of the Port of Echuca I found which I particularly like.

As this is my first powerpoint presentation and I have uploaded the images I am using to Flickr (and even managed to put them into sets, etc.) so I don't lost them or clog up the Shire hard drive, I feel I have been learning a bit this week.

Cheers

Week #3 - Finding photos on Flickr

OK, that was fun. I could spend days browsing through some of the fantastic photographs on Flickr. Here is one I particularly liked (hope this uploads correctly).

Cheers