Don't sweat the small things....

My Grandmother - Norah Dean - passed away peacefully in her sleep on Friday 11th December 2009.  She had recently turned 86, and for her birthday gave me a present, some of her rings.  She has been very sick this last year, and had spent some time in intensive care.  She told me a month before she died that she was happy to turn 86, but that was it.

Our family was lucky to be able to spend a day with her whilst she was in the hospital a few weeks ago.  She was very lucid, and spent the day regaling my kids with stories about her parents, grandparents and her only son (my dad).  It is a memory that I will cherish forever - her in the hospital bed and my kids sitting next to her listening intently to stories about the infamous Granny Cackles.  We took photos of her with the kids, and I am so glad to have these last photos of her.

The funeral was held on the Gold Coast yesterday, and was just lovely.  The service opened with one of her favorite sayings: 'Don't sweat the small stuff, just sweat the big stuff'.  It was just a short service, with my whole family in attendance, as well as some of my Nan's bowling friends, residents from her nursing home, her best friend of 49 years Una, and many of my dad's cousins.

She knitted and sewed right up until a few weeks before she died, with her creations going to various charities across the Gold Coast.  I remember her trying to teach me to knit when I was little, and her deciding that I was unteachable.  I still cannot knit, but when I learnt to stitch and quilt, she was delighted to receive one of my quilts. She took great pleasure in showing the quilt to her friends whilst telling them that I still could not knit!

It is very sad to lose her, but I am so glad she is not in pain anymore.  She will be greatly missed by my whole family and myself.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.  They must be felt with the heart.                                                                                         - Helen Keller

Storylines Q150

I was very lucky to be able to attend a two day workshop run by the State Library of Queensland last friday.   The workshop was part of the Q150 celebrations, its aim for participants to create a digital photostory that captures a memory or story somehow relating to Queensland.

Three staff from our library, four retired volunteers from the Milne Bay Military Museum and a partridge in a.. oops and a retired oral historian attended the workshop.

I must say one of the best parts of the workshop was talking with the other attendees.  I learnt heaps from them, and was on the receiving end of some great tech tips!!!  I was also very moved by the amazing war digital stories that they created.

I chose to create a story based on some interviews I had done with some of the parents who attend our storytime.  Due to time constraints, I only used one of the interviews.  We used a free program called Windows Movie Maker, and below is the end result.  And yes, that is me with the ducklings on my fingers!!!!

Week 6 SLQ Licence to Test Drive Part B

Test Drive #6 looked at the rise of online videos.  This is in part due to increasing improvements in  technology and the decreasing costs of the tools needed.  This has led to a massive rise in creating content, uploading content, and being able to freely share it.   My  9 yr old has asked for a digital video camera for christmas so she can start making movies......   Youtube has made it very easy to upload and share content, and I know our whole family uses it when looking for 'how to' information.

I like how libraries are using Youtube to share staff training, new programs and resources, how to guides, promotion and marketing and talking about the future of libraries.  I have uploaded some of the school holiday programs run by our Young People's team.

I have also used Vimeo to host a couple of digital photo stories that I have created about our library.

I have chosen to embed this clip from Youtube as it is sort of an in family joke in our house.  Both my husband and son game, and WOW terminology features heavily in their conversations.  Heard repeatedly:

Me: That's it! Get off that computer now or I am going to....
Husband or son: I've just got to log off somewhere safe....

My son found these clips on Youtube and they have become family favourites!  I especially like the little brother, and in another clip he talks about how he had to visit the local library and use their resources as his mother had banned him from all technology!!

More Google - or week 5 of SLQ Licence 2 Test Drive

Week 5 is titled More Google!!  I have been increasingly using google for more and more things lately.  I now have a gmail account - as do both my kids - and have customised my google page at work with iGoogle.  I have added weather and news widgets, my google reader, a star trek quote widget, a SLQ search widget, and a coffee quote widget - all the important things, lol. I use google docs and I have also been playing around surfing (or trying not to sink) on the new Google wave.  I use Google maps regularly, and also the Google calendar, synching it to my iphone.

I am constantly surprised by the amount of *things* Google does.  I enjoyed playing around on Google books and wasted spent some time searching and narrowing my searches using their advanced search box (such a librarian, I know..).  I also was amazed at Google translate as I had only vaguely heard about this site, but had not played around on it.  I typed in my blog's URL and then translated the page from english to spanish - just because I could!

This site has great potential for explaining information about the library's services and resources to multi-cultural patrons.

I read somewhere - can't remember where - about people being afraid of Google's domination in our online lives.  I guess this is where we as librarians need to be able to step up to the plate and teach digital literacy skills that equip our customers to critically think, live and learn in an online environment,  I know of many libraries that do this already.  I like this quote that I read in an Educause Journal about digital literacies:

Ironically, while some see the profusion of realities as threatening to us, to our children, and even to democracy, the new media is nothing if not simply another way of viewing our world, of interacting with one another, of opening ourselves to learning in realms of possibility we never conceived of before. In our development as higher-order thinkers, multiple realities are far less important to our survival than our ability to understand what we see, to interpret what we experience, to analyze what we are exposed to, and to evaluate what we conclude against criteria that support critical thinking. In the end, it seems far better to have the skills and competencies to comprehend and discriminate within a common language than to be left out, unable to understand.

PS - I am updating my post with my response to a comment on this post. 'Quite ironic really that I completely forgot to include google as a search engine, google reader, You tube, blogger and google scholar. Just goes to show how completely integrated they are within my life that I didn't even think to include them!'

Licence 2 Test Drive - Part B - Week 4

Week 4 of the State Library of Queensland's Licence to Test Drive Part B looked at web browsers.

A web browser is the software program loaded on your computer, Smartphone or a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) which you use to connect to the Internet. The browser is used for retrieving, presenting, and navigating information resources on the World Wide Web and email.An information resource is identified by an address or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) this may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks in web pages or other resources enable you to easily navigate your browser to other sites or resources. 

I looked at some of the popular web browsers, including internet explorer, firefox, safari and google chrome. When I bought my iphone last year, I used safari for the first time, and now use it as the web browser on my mac.  My work computer uses internet explorer as its SOE.  I was quite surprised watching this You tube video about web browsers.  I have never used firefox, but my friend in IT up the road at council is always telling me how much better it is, and after watching this little clip I am thinking of installing it on our computer downstairs.  But then I was quite impressed by Google chrome as well....

So, this Licence 2 Test drive has been a good one, and has forced me out of my web browser comfort zone and challenged me to try some of the others available.  So, if for no other reason than that, then I am very grateful to have been gently pushed.

Week 3 SLQ Licence to Test Drive Part B

This week I reviewed Podcasts and Audio as part of the State Library of Queensland's Licence to Test Drive Part B.  

A podcast is a non-music audio or video recording that is distributed over the internet. The word “podcasts” is derived from Personal On Demand broadcast – hence podcast. You can listen to a podcast anytime, anywhere. The distribution is what makes a podcast unique. It's also what makes a podcast powerful. Interested listeners can receive updates through RSS feeds when new content is posted.

I enjoyed this post, and was amazed at the variety of institutions podcasting, especially the State Libraries of NSW and VIC and the Powerhouse Museum.


I personally have tried Audacity, though have mainly used it for capturing music.  As I have said before, I have an iphone which I love, and have applications on it which I use for podcasting and listening to podcasts.

The first is Audioboo, an iphone app that allows anyone with an iphone to record and publish themselves.  I have used audioboo to interview parents attending storytime at our library, members of our young writers group, staff members who are participating in this learning program, and to record random bits of information, documenting a specific time or place.  I have also used it to capture an interview to use in a conference presentation.

I also have another application on my iphone called TED, which allows me to watch small video clips about technology, entertainment and design.  I can also listen to podcasts of talks as well.

The mobile device makes creating and listening to podcasts amazingly easy, and this has huge ramifications for libraries.  Capturing family histories, sharing stories and explaining new happenings are just some of the things that could be done.

On my holidays I.....

On the first day of my holidays, I attended two library conferences, participated in a presentation, cleaned my house and sewed a quilt top.  In my trackies.  From the comfort of my lounge.  And loved every minute of it!  How and why I can hear you asking.....

Over the last few weeks, I have been co creating/co editing a conference paper that Gill Hallam was to present at LIANZA 09, in Christchurch.  The paper was on the use of eportfolios as a tool for professional development within the library industry.  My partner in crime Rebecca and I finished editing the paper last week, and Gill presented the paper on Monday lunchtime.  Our paper can also be viewed using the following tiny URL:  http://tiny.cc/ALIAeportfolio .

I had hoped to be able to attend the QPLA conference in Townsville this week, and asked for holidays accordingly. The conference themes of technology, challenge and change appealed to me, and I would have loved another chance to hear Michael Stephens's talk. Unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough $$$, and I didn't win the free conference package, thus not being able to attend.  So, I decided to spend my hols at home, catching up on some things around the house.

Sunday evening, I changed the settings on my Tweetdeck, and added two hashtags to the deck - #QPLA09 and LIANZA09.  I was then able to follow in real time - via twitter - the conversations and presentations from people actually attending the conference, and from other twerps (twitterers) who were participating virtually as well.

This worked out really well for me, and I was able to follow all the conversations surrounding both conferences, as well as ask questions, receive responses, and answer comments about the eportfolio presentation, all via twitter.

At one stage I was sewing and watching the conversation flow at the same time!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22229268@N05/4010002499/

I am so grateful that there are technological tools that allows me to participate in conversations that are happening all over the globe.  I am also grateful that I know about them, and can use them to enrich both my professional and personal life.