Monday 25 April 2011

Genealogy & History News

http://www.gouldgenealogy.com/
This is an Australian History site with an RSS feed that delivers articles on all aspects of Australian history and genealogy.

RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds are an excellent way to save time on searching the web and instead have information sent directly to your desktop. Instead of going to Favourites and clicking on each site, the site comes to you via its feeds. I set up a number of feeds including ABC News Top Stories; Powerhouse Museum Photo of the Day; Bette Davis News; Flight Centre; Genealogy & History News; Historic Houses Trust News; Librarybytes.

RSS Feeds are applicable to libraries and should be linked to the catologue to generate feeds of newly acquired and catalogued content; to library newsletters to send the latest information & activities to patrons; linked to New Books Blogs so that the library can feed the discussions direct to users, etc.

I'll certainly use them now instead of just book marking my favourite sites as I have done previously. I think I'll save time by so doing and it eliminates having to search the site to find the latest content.

RSS feeds could also belinked to library subject guides so that as new content is added to the guides the patron is informed accordingly.

Sunday 24 April 2011

Surry Hills Public Library

Surry Hills Public Library
The new Surry Hills Public Library was opened in 2009 and has proved to be a great hit with the local community. It's brilliant interior design coupled with great lighting and excellent collection for its small size has led to a considerable increase in patronage when compared with the old library that preceded it. The staff are friendly and helpful while there are excellent internet facilities and wireless for those with their own laptops. The library puts on regular musical events as well as author readings and children's reading sessions. It's a great place to engage with content or to just chill out in the soft lounge chairs.

Lifelong learning

Lifelong learning is particularly important for me since I have been retired from the workforce for nearly a year and a half.  I'm now returning on a permanent part-time basis. Hence my need to both reacquaint and update my knowledge and skills around the latest 2.0 web technologies. Since I am a librarian these technologies will assume an ever-growing importance in the life of libraries and their staff. Professional lifelong learning is important for people of all ages and given that the government wants its citizens to keep on working and not to retire too early on,  then keeping abreast of technological change together with the latest developments and discipline-knowledge within one's profession is an ongoing skill essential to the performance outcomes of mature-aged workers.

Thsi Web 2.0 program affords me the opportunity to keep abreast of technological change and to see how I  can apply them to enhancing the delivery of both content and services to our public library patrons; thereby enhancing both their overall level of satisfaction with library services and the relevant information they require delivered more seamlessly to their desktops.

I think a New Book discussion blog would be ideal for the library I work in since it would afford the patrons the opportunity to exchange ideas on the books they are reading, promote the library's collection amongst patrons and by patrons and give feedback on collection development to library staff.

At a previous university library where I worked several years ago, we used an internal staff blog to elicit comment from staff on library restructures and library organisational models as a way of both obtaining feedback to the managment library restructure committee of which I was a member and a means to communicate committee members ideas to staff on their postings. It considerably increased staff participation in the restructuring process and as well as their awareness of issues involved with organisational restructuring. It also disseminated ideas around various library models for future consideration.