Book Circle bibliotherapy

We have established a Book Circle for library users, facilitated by two keen staff members. There are about 14 people in the group, and meetings are held once a month, during the day. Participants are invited to bring along one book that they have read and enjoyed, and talk about it to the group. One staff member leads the group and the other acts as the scribe, recording book details and comments. This information is later printed and distributed to members, either via email or post. We end the session with afternoon tea and an informal chat, and new friendships are being formed as a result. One of our members has established a Book Circle blog at http://bookcirc.blogspot.com.

#23 Summary of thoughts

The challenge of Learning 2.0 was a decisive moment for me as I neared retirement. Either I could take the easy option and ignore new developments and drift along to retirement, or I could embrace modern technology with open arms and run with it. Luckily I made the right decision. What a buzz it has been - a truly great learning experience! Staff-members at our branch have had many interesting tea-room discussions and debates on what we have learned, and we have a whole new shared vocabulary. The Stephen Abram lecture was inspirational. Following the point Stephen made about sharing information I have added all the sites from the training to our Favourites on the Information Desk so that it is accessible to everyone. This will enable us to have a quick refresher in spare moments and have the sites at our fingertips when we are demonstrating their usefulness to the public. I have already suggested to a patron that he should become a contributor to Wikipedia in his particular field of interest, as I have done myself, and that Google Alerts are a really useful way of keeping in touch with current information. The learning continues...

#22 Audiobooks and World eBook fair

This just gets better and better. I have discovered that libraries can purchase audio files to allow library members to download them onto their MP3 players. What a great extension of our existing free library service! I have had a look at the range of titles available, and, being a Youth Services Librarian, was quite impressed with the range of wonderful children's stories.

#15 On Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

The greatest thing about all these new developments is the way they facilitate the sharing of knowledge. The Open WorldCat project is a great example of what can be achieved by co-operative effort. RSS feeds and FRBR searches where results can be clustered in eclectic ways by individual searchers are powerful new tools available to everyone.

RSS Feed from podcast

I have managed to remember how to add an RSS feed to my Bloglines account, and have just successfully done so with a podcast!

#21 Podcasting

My daughter sorted me out with ITunes recently and it is really handy to be able to have a wide selection of music on my Ipod. For the current exercise I looked at podcast.net and tried a few unusual subjects, with no success, so went for some more common ones such as Storytelling and Book Reviews, with more luck. I also had some success looking up authors such as Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. I also discovered that there are volunteers out there who do podcasts of full-text public domain books. There is Audiobooks with Annie, where Annie reads aloud from quite a few classic titles. There is also a site called babblebooks, which I'm just about to look at, which has dozens of free audiobooks. This would be a great thing to promote among our library patrons.

#20 Youtube

I subscribed to Youtube some weeks ago but couldn't see how I'd use it. It is becoming clearer with practice. The examples I looked at in the practice exercise were the 1970s commercial (especially the Ty D Bol toilet cleaner with the man in the boat sailing in a toilet), and the Johnny Depp one. I had to switch Johnny off, though, because it sounded a bit flippant and lighthearted for the office.