Ning...social networking

I had a quick look at NING - social networking...and located Palmerston North city library on this site. I have requested to join this group to see how it works. Funny I found several hundred libary groups within NING each set up for different reasons. Palmerston North was set up for learning 2.0 technologies. Will keep you keep informed.(if they accept me). Oh the pressure.

Like us, here at UCOL, The PNCC web filtering has blocked some of the WEB 2.0 technologies which need to be used. Fortunately we have been able to get most of ours unblocked (for periods of time) Is this censorship by IT...or by libraries. What about User education? Customer Service? Limitation to resources and knowledge?

Time for some serious rethinking on how Libraries can use these resouces and provide access to, and learning support, for our patrons. Will Libraries still be the gateway to knowledge resources and librarians the gatekeepers.

We need to educate the powers that be......in learning insitutions, public libraries and beyond to the value resources that are being SHARED by social networking tools.

wikis and zoho writer.....

Wikis...as Subject guides....this blog was created using zoho writer a web based wordprocessing programme.

I had a very interesting time looking at the wiki pages we were directed to. I thought that we could use the wiki for subject guides as a very useful tool for UCOL library. Have a look at the examples in week 8 Here is a wiki I have in my online travels Web 2.0 in 15 minutes a day

We have had in the past, been keen on doing subject guide for our users. The examples I noted included popular books, magazines and resources from the library holdings as well as links to useful websites e journals and databases etc.

I think we should investigate this further for very useful possbilities, utilising the free resources of wiki creators. What do you think?

I had a play with Zoho writer, and was impressed in the availability of your documents created and saved so that they are retrievable from any computer as the documents are saved in cyberspace (freaky). I posted this blog entry from Zoho writer post options. The help function was great, it gave me simple and clear instruction on how to add a hyper link to my document eg week 8 has a hyperlink embedded into it. The help box could be moved so that I could follow the insturctions while doing the task. I found the blogger help screen not so helpful when trying to ue some of the features.