Final Post for Web 2.0 Training

I gained some useful tips here and there by doing the exercises. It made me look at some of the possibilities and limitations of the different applications . The new ideas can be made to work for libraries and their patrons to enhance leisure and learning. Examples of pages on Facebook and Bebo to promote the library were interesting and showed the potential of these to draw new patrons.

Project Gutenberg

I had a look at Project Gutenberg with the free e-books which can be downloaded . It was interesting to see the list of the top 100 books. As might be expected they are a lot of pre- 20th Century novels as they are out of copyright. There is a good number of classics including Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot and Conan Doyle. Useful for those studying literature.

Bloglines, RSS feeds and Podcasts

Looked at podcasts and added a list to my blog with an assortment of websites. I added a daily history RSS feed which listed significant events from today in history. Useful to know how to fiddle with. Saves some time to get constant updates rather than having to go into the website everytime. Could be used for educational and promotional purposes as well for those who want a news and information source.

You tube

I added some clips of Joe Lovano playing saxophone. One with a version of Body and Soul which is a jazz standard, most famously performed by Coleman Hawkins in 1939. It was easy to do and did not require any copying or pasting which helped a lot. It is flexible in that you can search under keywords or by the author of the clip. I did not use the embedding method by copying and pasting the HTML code as the other method seemed easier.

Libraries can use video as a means of demonstrating points in a visual context. Instructions in text do not appeal to everyone and a video can grab the viwer's attention in much the same way as a well- chosen illustration, photograph or diagram can.Videos can be useful as a promotional tool. They can be directed at people who are not regular readers and have not considered using the library . It might attract those who are more at home at looking at television or computers insead of books.

Zoho writer and Google Docs

These two websites are extremely useful and eliminate the need in most cases for external storeage devices such as compact discs or flash drives. It also enables users to collaborate on projects together without having to forward attachments by sharing the facility online. Users can permit others to look at or edit their documents . The fact that the information is accessible from any computer in any place is its greatest advantage.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Zoho1

The Zoho writer is an interesting tool to use. It avoids the need for an external storage device and  provides a lot of other options for connecting to other applications
I had to fiddle about for a while  to get it to publish to the blog but it seems easier and more straight forward than using Google Docs .