Facebook fumblings

Even before Licence to Test Drive I had been drawn in to using Facebook. A young relative from Holland arrived in January this year to spend 6 months travelling around in Australia. He is quite a keen photographer and soon set up a Facebook account to share his photos and keep many of his family back in Holland and the few of us in Australia up to date as to his whereabouts and what he was getting up to.

Though not a great fan of social networking sites, I've managed the basics to keep abreast of where he is. I've also been able to contact his parents (cousin) back in Holland and catch up with family news in that part of the world. I also noticed my sister-in-law is 'a friend', and delving into her profile find that her brother and niece are both Facebook users.

Wiki fun

I've been making my way through the Test Drive#3: Wikis tutorial. From the list of wikis to discover I visited Mint Museums wiki where I enjoyed some of the objects on display. The Library Success: a best practice wiki was very well set out and very informative. Hovever, Book Lovers wiki at the Princeton Public Library was my favourite. It seems a pity it wasn't continued.

I visited Wikipedia and checked out Brisbane and South Bank. I use Wikipedia a great deal in my job - I find it very useful checking on names for authority work when cataloguing and it gives extra information on the names searched.

This turorial was just the incentive needed to do some updating to our Monographs wiki which had been long overdue. With a workmate as 'driver', we updated a section on Legal deposit receipt printing. In the near future, I'll be the 'driver'. It certainly isn't rocket science.

Kurilpa Bridge, Brisbane

Kurilpa Bridge, Brisbane
Originally uploaded by stephenk1977

At the moment this is the bridge to nowhere. But over the past few months the gap between the city side and Southbank side has gradually been narrowing. The approaches from Southbank have been joined to the pylon in the river, leaving only the gap in the middle of the river. No doubt, this gap will be closed over the coming weeks. Up on the 5th floor we have had a birds-eye view of proceedings.

18th March - New beginnings

I'm a complete ludite in regard to blogging. I've never done it before. That's why I've undertaken the "Licence to testdrive programme" at the State Library of Queensland. I've watched the video clips along the way and I've followed the prompts and filled in the boxes where necessary and hey presto - I'm blogging.

I'm sure I'll get stuck or confused along the way, but hey, that's how you learn - as the expression goes - you learn by your mistakes. So far, so good. I hope the rest of the programme is as easy to follow as it has been so far. I'm looking forward to learning more about a lot of the new technologies and how they can be used to my benefit and to friends. With family overseas, I'm sure I'll find tools that I can use to make contact a lot more interesting.

Looking at the various blogs shown as examples, it seems to me libraries are embracing this technology to promote themselves, their activiities, what they have to offer and to promote new materials held in their libraries. This is a fantastic way to get across their message to the computer savvy community using the technology that the young have embraced and grown up with.

I feel as if I've at least taken the first step along the way in this programme. The first step, they say, is the hardest and, really, it hasn't been that hard at all. I look forward to the next step.