Week 9 (session 23)

Well, that's the end of the road. I think i've learnt a few things and discovered a lot of websites that could be handy to recommend to customers. In fact, a patron asked me what a "wiki" was the other day and I was able to give them a good account, having watched the video explaining them for this programme.

I don't think libraries will have to abandon books straight away, but it's good to get a sense of how things will change over the coming years, so the programme was good on that account.

Bye now...

Week 9 (session 22)

This week I looked at the e-books available on Net Library. Lots of classics available there and it would be great if you just wanted to look up a certain section (not sure if I would want to read a whole book onscreen yet, though I haven't seen a kindle yet).

I also looked at the Downloadable Media set-up. I've actually used this service before to download a book to my ipod. It used to be that it wouldn't work on ipods and I think people will find it a lot more practical now that ipods are included in the servicable files. It's a bit of a pain that you have to download the software to your computer, but it doesn't seem to be a very big file size. It would certainly be handy if people could load up their ipods from the Library computers, though I guess it would be a great strain on the network since audio books are reasonably large files.

Great to see some newer authors like Chuck Palahnuik on there.

Week Nine (session 21)

This week I was looking at podcasts. I tried the links suggested, but both Podcast.net and Yahoo Podcasts didn't seem to go anywhere. However Podcast Alley seemed to have plenty of podcasts listed. The library-related ones mostly seemed to be about how to use libraries.

The most interesting one I found was the "Classic Tales Podcast" which is described as the following:
"The Classic Tales Podcast delivers professional performances of unabridged classics. Enjoy classic short fiction from Poe, Dickens, Hardy, and others. Performed by character actor B.J. Harrison"

Sounds like a good thing to recommend to audio book users who are want to try a few different classic authors without having to get an audio book by each of them.

For the record, the podcast can be found amongst the arts listings, at number 12 in the list:
http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_genres.php?pod_genre_id=17

Week Nine (session 20)

I was already pretty experienced with wasting time on youtube. To complete this week's session, I thought I'd link this video I made for my old band...

Week Eight (session 19)

This week I looked at the award nominated site, www.lulu.com. It is a website where you can layout your own text and images as a book and have it printed. A 120 page book only cost US$7 to print. However, you'd already know how to lay it out as a PDF. I suppose the postage would make the whole thing I bit overly expensive. Otherwise, you could write a book for a friend's birthday and give it to them ... assuming that you are exceedingly fast at typing and laying out books...

Week Eight (session 18)

Hi there,

This week I learnt how to use the website, Zoha, to create documents. I thought i'd try that page because I've already used Google Docs a little bit. My first attempt at a Zoha doc is posted in my previous post, though none of the smiley faces came up. It was pretty easy to use and quite similar to Microsoft Word. It's kinda nice to think that people who can't afford Microsoft word and other programs of that type can use these free sites online.

Test One

"ken you don't want to be a page forever" 

"who said i've been alive forever?" 

"ken you don't want to be a page forever" 

"who said i've been alive forever?"