E books

Just the thing to keep the travel pack light. Ebook readers have always been the limiting factor for fiction readers - but for researchers needing to find text on line the content is now extensive.Enjoyed browsing through some of the resources on Friedbeef. Book covers, even for eBooks are a great addition to aid selection. Personally podcasts are more appealing but am still stuggling with downloads of podcasts to my ipod. Also on the list for follow up homework!

Second Life

How do I get more first life time to get to grips with Second Life?! (Maybe there is Youtube coverage on this!!) Learning possibilities and opportunities are obviously emormous as the various the Youtube videos demonstrate. Have marked this Web 2.0 area for further exploration. Do wonder how the energy inputs of second life learning stack up against real life learning - but then if learning is more successful in second life then outcome needs to be factored into the equation.. More research required. Open University used TV to reach students who were unable to travel to a capmpus to study - hard to believe but that was fairly radical in it's day. Second Life in many ways is just a progression of taking learning to the point of need.

YouTube

This has to be the ultimate Web 2.0 applications for travellers. Find videos of far away and exotic places that never feature on the TV travel show, check out a location before visiting and get the feel of the local community. Descriptors are a bit lacking but if time and bandwidth are unlimited there is so much to experience. Here are the jumping monkeys from Jodphur - with beautiful music! http://youtube.com/watch?v=8xK-y7KGIfE

Podcasts

Plenty of useful and interesting material here but much more time needed! Haven't quite got the RSS feed sorted yet!

Rollyo meets Del.icio.us

At first encounter I thought Rollyo was going to be another interesting but not terribly useful application. But the more I think about it, the more potential it seems to have. Created a Rollyo to harmonise with a group of my Del.icio.us bookmarks and hey presto I can search my customised list. Very neat - now it would be good if Rollyo would allow me to quickly import my Del.icio.us tags, rather than having to cut and paste them

Wikis

Great concept and there are some really attractive and easy to use options for creating wikis available. Huge time saving for libraries with little IT support. Have come across Library Success: A best practices wiki before and of course Wikipedia. Wikis are ideal as staff collaborative spaces and mnay libraries are using them for staff intranets,procedure and training portals. One of the best I have seen is https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/ which makes good use of graphics and colour. The wiki blog combination works well.

Library 2.0

A lot of the commentary on library 2.0 is now 2+ years old . Great to see the advances that some libraries have made. The toughest barriers to using Web 2.0 seem be the loosening up of control by institutions to allow user participation and the dilemma of how much time to spend checking out new applications to find something useful to add to service delivery. Few libraries seem to active strategies for investigating/trying new applications...(and it does take time!)so blogs like The Librarian in Black are great time savers.