Embedding Delicious widget

Last night I was testing myself to embed my Delicious bookmarks into here. I was so happy when I finally managed to embed it, YAY!! I couldn't write a post about how to do it because it was really late in the night, 1am. So, here is the post.

I searched the google for 'delicious widget for blogspot', and it introduced me this site, "25 great blogger widgets" by Mashable (oo.. just realised that I have followed Mashable on twitter for quite sometime). In that post, it recommends the "Delicious Linkrolls". Linkrolls allow Delicous users to have their latest Delicious bookmarks displayed as part of their website. What I did is, I signed into my Delicious account, then adjust some settings in this Linkrolls, then insert the HTML code into the hypertext of my blogspot page.

Here comes the problem. I don't know where to find a section to put this HTML code in my blogspot. So, I read "Google Blogger for Dummies" (hehe!!) on "How to use HTML/JavaScrip gadget window in blogger". BINGO!!!

1. Go to customise page
2. Click on "add a gadget"
3. Find the gadget "HTML/JavaScript", click the + sign
4. Set my Title
5. Copy and paste the HTML code provided by Delicious Linkrolls to the content box of that gadget.
6. Click save button
7. Woohoo!! My delicious bookmarks was successfully embedded into my blog.

I love this adventure of trying, seeking, testing and the joy of found it and use it....

Proudly present to you, my twitter!!

Twitter!! The 21st century hottest microblogging tool so far..

I heard of it. I signed up for it when US president Obama said he was on twitter last year, but, I didn't tweet or use it until December 2009. This is due to I have a negative impression of it at the start. I thought, why should I let other people know what I am doing all day long? And I am not interested to know what other people did to their life, living, work, study or whatever.

And, here comes the change. During my long four months summer holiday break, I have time to visit many librarian blogs. I bookmarked them (most of them, especially those who are active in blogging). I found that, nearly half of them have twitter account. Because I was so attracted to these librarians' blog posts, I started to think, may be I can use my twitter to follow them. Since then, twitter has become another information gathering channel for me. I log onto it several times a day using my mobile twitter platform, and I have many recent and newest issues and topics about librarianship; issues related to information institutes, university and high school libraries; social media new tools, application and trends; the latest web related technology development news and etc.

Here is my twitter and you are welcome to have a peek on my most recent updates to the left of this blog.


I have only 25 followers. I filtered most of the advertising and "spam" followers. I don't follow many people too (only 69 for the moment), because I am very selective in whom I follow. Think of this, when I follow someone, I will get their tweets showing on my twitter. If they are not tweeting quality information, I will have wasted my time reading over those unnecessary rubbish. This is the issue of how to manage my twitter to best suit my need.

Oh yes! Thanks to John (our lecturer of Doc Man) who linked the bit.ly that can shorten the URL I want to include in my tweet. Bit.ly is very useful.

I will show you my lists of whom I have followed next post.

NLA newspaper digitisation program

Our proud national collaboration project in digitising historic (out of copyright) newspapers (1803-1954) owned by each states. The greatest thing about this project is, it invites public to join the project in correcting errors on digitised newspaper articles. It was initiated by The National Library of Australia in 2007. I have browse and read through its program overview. I was amazed by its Project Details page which has included: project details and progress reports, the processing and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) of newspapers, metadata, system architecture, content management system, search and delivery system, statistics of service usage, public collaborative text correction and tagging of newspaper articles. It also listed which newspapers are available and how we as public can involve in this project.

The public contribution in text correction opened my view towards newspaper digitisation, and how a national digitisation program can benefit the entire country through the collaboration of each states and community libraries. This program not only provides searching capability for historic newspaper articles, it also serves as a teaching tool for primary, secondary and ESL students in learning Australian History, English and etc. It also benefits for researchers especially who are specialised in Australian History and Genealogy.

Here comes the actual site, and its wonderful quick and easy online tutorial on how to search and correct the text. The article that I have chosen was about the launching of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) in 1906. I guess the original article must be really old, and the digitised image through OCR is really poor on this particular article. Please refer to the first 13 lines of the article on left. I barely can see the correct spelling, neither can the OCR. The accuracy of OCR technique used in this project averages from 71% to 98.02%. But I still can read over it with zoom function. And I have made some corrections to the first 6 lines of the text. That's why public is encouraged to participate and contribute to the correction of the digitised text.

I love to contribute in this project. It is simple to use and no strict rules as the wikipedia and other scholarly collaboration sites. This is good and suit my current level of collaboration work to public project.

THE PROJECT IS REALLY COOL!!!

I hate you, Wikipedia!!!

Yes, this is exactly what I felt last week. Totally disappointed with it. I have tried to edit some articles in the wikis, I even signed up for it, and it didn't let me do any editing. I have tried to add some useful links URL to library location, and it was telling me that: external links are better to add in the footnote or reference part. I was furious!!!! So, no luck on editing Wikis.

Yea yea, I know that wikipedia is a really powerful online free encyclopedia, it is dynamic, attractive, open to public, easy to access from anywhere with internet facilities. In one simple description: the 21st century online collaborative tool... But, I was told it is not an authoritative source from the first lecture I have in this course. I was taught as an information manager, I have to think of the following questions:
1. Do we(information profession) use it?
2. Do we encourage people to use it?
3. Do we train people to use it? If so, how do we train people to use the wiki with evaluative and critical eyes.

I also learned that, apart from wikipedia, there are a lot of other similar collaborative tool in the web. I list some of them here:
1. Encyclopedia of Life - an online collaborative encyclopedia between scientific community and the general public. Goal: to provide knowledge about all the world's organism or living species. This is done in a more controlled environment. It is authoritative and restricted. Information is more reliable.
2. Conservapedia - American, conservative point of view, wiki-based Web encyclopedia.
3. Scholarpedia - this is a peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia. Articles in there are dynamic. They provide up-to-date and high quality of content.
4. Knol - Google version of collaborative encyclopedia. Knol = a unit of knowledge. Some pages are opinion pages, selling products, how to use product and etc.
5. Citizendium - this includes acticles with reliable, authoratitive and quality. The contributors must use their real name in posting articles.

RSS feed and feed reader

RSS - acronym for Really Simple Syndication, which often related to feed and feed reader.

I didn't know that Google Reader is a RSS Reader, that can serve to collect all updates from my favourite blogs and news sites under one account. And please don't laugh, I didn't even know I can easily access this Google Reader under my Gmail account which I have used for more than a year. I guess this is so called the 'generation gap'.

I was a bit greedy. I went to visit most of the blogs posted on the blackboard for my Document Management tutorial, and I followed nearly all of them. Then, when I started to use this Google Reader, I was in shock. There are totally 51 blogs that I have subscribed too. Can I follow all of them and read all of the updated posts? No! I don't think I am able to do it. So, I am planning to filter them and only follow those interesting and informative one. Now, I understand what is 'information overload' and 'being selective in choosing quality information'.




Yeah, that horrible 51 blogs as shown on the left diagram from my Google reader.

But, one thing I like about Google Reader is, I can simply add any blogs or sites that I like by one simply click on the "Add a subscription" tab. That is convenient.

From the tutorial blackboard, it has suggested that alternative way of managing feeds is setup an account at either Netvibes, Blogster, or Bloglines to bring all feeds together. This is what I have discovered.

1. Netvibes - Free registration. It is a personalised dashboard publishing platform for the web. It brings personal online information together under one account, including: newspapers, blogs, weather, email, search, videos, photos, social networks, podcasts, widgets, games and other funny applications. (I love this one actually, but need more time to dig in. At the moment, I just post it here and will come back to dig it in the future.)



2. Blogster - It says in its 'About' page that it is an online community for people to share interests and activities. (huh??? Is it same as the Facebook kinda application?? Then, I don't need this.)



3. Bloglines - It allows users to browse favourite web sites in one single page. It is a free online service for 'All-in-one' Blog, which including news feed search, online subscriptions, news reader, blog publishing and social sharing tools. (Wow!! I was stunt by its 'About' page. Is it really that amazing???!!!! Do I really need this complicated personal online web management application??? Yeah, while I was amazed by many functions that it offered, many questions popped up in my mind, e.g. do I really need this, is it time consuming, do I need to learn new applications to survive in 21st century information handling??)

Librarian Bloggers 1

The followings are some of the recommended library technology blogs from my Document Management course. I saw a few familiar names. There are a few which I have them on my Twitter since last year, such as, Michael Stephens and Lorcan Dempsey. I am that kind of person who loves organising things. So, I visited all the recommended sites, picked up a few details from there and re-organised them. The lists I put here are those that I think it will benefit for other new librarians who are looking for some good blogs to read and know about librarianship. For my planning, I will continue to use this blog in the future to record my librarianship.

And noted that my title is Librarian Bloggers 1, which means, I have Librarian Bloggers 2 and so on to post in few days time. Not to forget, my favourite: The Unquiet Librarian and Musing About Librarianship.

Here are the lists:

American Librarian bloggers:

1. The Freerange Librarian - Author:K.G. Schneider (Director of the Cushing Library at Holy Names University, California.), blog about librarianship and writing.


2. Tame the Web - Author:Michael Stephens (Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, Illinois), blog about libraries, technology and people


3. Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog - Vice President of OCLC, blog about library logistics, collaborative sourcing, collective collection, evolving metadata and bibliographic practices, web 2.0 and library organisation.


4. iLirarian - Author: Ellyssa Kroski (Information Services Technologist at Barnard College, writer, educator, and international conference speaker), blog about technology and library.


5. LibrarianInBlack - Author: Sarah Houghton-Jan (Digital Futures Manager of the San Jose Public Library), blog about librarianship, technology and web services.


6. LibraryBytes - Author: Helene Blowers (Director of Digital Strategy for the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Keynote Presenter & Consultant), blog about libraries and learning 2.0.


7. Information Wants To Be Free - Author: Meredith Farkas(Head of Instructional Initiatives at Norwich University in Vermont), blog about librarianship and technology usage in day to day library.

Canadian Librarian:

1. Stephen's Lighthouse - Author: Stephen Abram. Blog about library industry trends, innovation and information.

(p.s. I was surprised!!! Where are Australian librarian bloggers??? Hello??)

My highly recommended librarian blog to read

Woo!! Just realised that the title is too long. But it said what this post is about.

I have been following The Unquiet Librarian blog for nearly a year. She has just been nominated as the best librarian blog in USA. Her blog is very informative, inspiring and useful. Her name is Buffy Hamilton with the blog URL: http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/. She is a media specialist/teacher-librarian at Creekview High School in Georgia. She has a master's degree of English Education and her Education Specialist is in School Library Media/Instructional Technology. She updates her posts on average three to four posts per week.

She uses her blog as a place to reflect her reading on other professional librarians' posts and prompts discussion on the issues raised. She embeds many links, slide shows and YouTune videos to introduce new social media and web 2.0 applications for her readers.

Here are some of the categories of topic that she posted:
- innovative changes to library
- web based software application and database (e.g. how to use current web based software to help her dealing with media course planning, presentation and library marketing.)
- library marketing and promotion
- library vision, mission and goals
- library space, shelving
- reflections on Conferences and articles, other bloggers' posts

I love her posts so much. Some of the applications that she used are very attractive and I just need some time to sit down and really dig into them. I am sure they are useful for my future career as an information profession.

Try it!!

So excited for my new blog

Woohoo!! New blog!!

I have been blogging since 2007 using MySpace. But still feeling very excited to setup another blog and I know that there will be at least 4 people following me. Nice!!

I would like to introduce a bit about me for this first post. I have graduated as a registered nurse back in many many years ago. This is my second year into the Information Management Program. I am currently working at the VCA and music libraries at the University of Melbourne. Yes, I am running over two campuses for both libraries but they are belong to the same Faculty.

I'm really looking forward to this project, as I know that I can learn how to attach some useful tools to my blog. With my previous blog (I am still using it at the moment), all the tools and application are quite easy to add-on, I wonder what tools and applicaiton have been offered by the "Blogger" and how easy they are to add-on and use. I know how to put photos and links onto blog, but I haven't learned how to put YouTube, Flickers and SlideShares on. Those are quite useful for sharing information.

Right, many expectations from me onto this Web 2.0 Adventure.

Let's get started!!!