FINAL ANALYSIS

23 things has opened my eyes to the wealth of online services available freely to anyone who chooses to use them! It's been an important feature of this study that the program has been 'formalized' for the workplace - that is, officially we could spend time widening our library eyes and extending our existing skills set - I know this would not have happened on an ad hoc basis as time is precious and there is always something else to do. It gave me:

• Confidence to try something new and realise it's not hard!
• Inspiration for new ways of delivering library services to our clients
• Structure to pace and focus my learning
• A useful Reference service - to save my time by pointing me to useful online services
• Flexible online study format - allowing me to fit my studies into my work schedule

Highlights

• Flickr - great for Powerpoint, blogs, all manner of things
• Blogger - excellent potential for delivering timely information to library clients
• RSS feeds - what a time saver and information gatherer!
• Novelty image generators - lots of fun and great for library orientations, websites, etc.

...and yes, if the opportunity arose I would definitely love to participate in another Discovery program such as this.

Online communities

I think Facebook and many other OCs tend to lend themselves more to social networking rather than professional networking. However that may be a reflection of my personal working style!!! I guess it depends on the context of the OC and EDNA is a great professional networking context more suited to our work environment.

Podcasting

I'm not that impressed with podcasting directories after my brief experience today - American content seems to feature heavily in podcast.net - I would prefer to go directly to websites and/or RSS feeds from information sources I trust, like the ABC website with an excellent podcasting service....

Online video hosting - YouTube

Having shared my love of Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 to my children via YouTube already, I won't spend any extra time here with online video hosting.

One exception - Common craft on YouTube has some fantastic videos for librarians - explaining many web technologies in simple english using cheesy but effective visuals. Worth referencing!!

Web 2.0 awards

Now this is a useful website to bookmark and I can see hours being frittered away here, but time is precious, so I'll bookmark for useful future reference!

On quick inspection some personal picks would be:

• googlemaps
• 43things
• lulu.com
• but there looks to be a LOT more, many of which have already beem covered in the TQL study

Shared doc comment

Just like the google accounts service

where TAFE QLD Library staff

currently share a spreadsheet,

this service has great potential in a work environment

when staff are located

 at various geographic locations

 and/or are mobile in their work environment.

  I can see this web service growing in demand!

Playing around with PBwiki

Yes this is a very social web tool!