Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Innovation & Engagement

Teamwork
Teamwork,
originally uploaded by jwlphotography.
I love this photo! It really shows how if we work together then we can find solutions to our problems - and get rewards!
Have recently discovered the fabulous Library Journals on the intranet put together by Collection Services. I was trying to get online access to a very recent copy of The Reference Librarian, and thought that I'd need to go down to stack. But no! Staff have access via the intranet. Cool!
A couple of interesting articles from Vol. 48(1) talk about the 'vertical search engine' tools that Google have provided - like Google Maps, Google Trends, Google News, etc. "Google Tools on the public reference desk" had some great ideas for new database users - introduce them to Google News (using the familiar google search screen) and show them how a newspaper database is the same concept but an even better way of searching as you can access all the articles. It's a great way of developing information literacy skills by building and increasing knowledge about resources. Also thought that I could suggest Google Trends as a starting point for market research when I'm on AskNow.
Btw if you're interested in some stats on how social media and blogs are becoming more popular, check out Wave 3 which includes global and individual country stats on blogs and internet participation. Apparently 29% of Australians have written a blog... that could be larger since NSW libraries have become involved (?)

2 comments:

slnsw_learning_2.0 said...

This is great - I'm learning new things reading your blog! Hope you are enjoying the course.

Mylee (PLS)

Natarsha said...

Thanks Mylee! I love the course - I'm learning so many new things! And it's really useful keeping a learning log. When you actually write down something that you've learned, you really clarify it.