Hm, July already?

Well I managed 24 posts in the month of #blogjune which is not so bad... in the last week though I really slumped. It wasn't a lack of time that caused the slump, rather the intensity of doing something every single day just overwhelmed me. Still, I got a lot out of it and will surely be in it again next year :)

I've had a good week. I created a tutorial video for a bioscience imagebase and human anatomy learning tool which was a bit scary as I did it live with five of my librarian colleagues listening in from the Eastern States. The 40 minute video is on our LibGuides but I'm not sure if I can bring myself watch it back even though I've had good feedback about it. It's always a bit weird to listen to yourself isn't it? 

At our college there are a few subjects that all first year students have to take. We often have students of these subjects in the library asking for help and the librarians prepare look at the assignment questions in advance and knowing where the resources to answer them are located. I've decided to go one step further and actually enrol in one of these subjects and do the assignments. It's an online subject, so I'm also curious to see what encouragement is provided to use the library, and whether the library's online resources are sufficient to answer the questions. I think the course should be pretty interesting too - it's called History of Healing and I've just listened to the first week's lectures and participated in the forum. The course continues for a full 13 weeks so I hope I can maintain the intensity.

An update on the other courses I'm doing at the moment...

Swimming in the Information Ocean - we're now in week 8 (or maybe 9) of this 10 week course and it's crux time. We're creating a wiki (my page is on Library Services on Mobile Devices) and I think I'm pretty much on track with everything. Just need to put in a couple of solid days next week and then the finish line will be in sight. 

ANZ 23 Mobile Things - I've faded out of this course a bit, although I'm still reading the blog regularly.  I enjoyed the Google Hangouts Thing and I'd like to try this out with my work colleagues at some stage. We use Skype at the moment so I'd like to compare the two to see if there are particular advantages to using one over the other. This week is calendars on the mobile, and I've heard that you can sync a work Outlook calendar with the iPhone calendar, so I'm going to try to work that out next week. Wondering whether I should also get my work emails on my mobile... hmm.

Looking forward - I'm excited about moving to full-time at my library at the end of this month and giving up my cataloging job (I will miss somethings about it...). And I'm looking forward to the Future of the Profession meeting on July 19th. And... I caught my cat being naughty and made a GIF out of it. My first one! fun :

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

14. Mapping kittens

I've been doing the Mapping with Google MOOC and really enjoying exploring what the new maps application can do. There's no firm release date for it yet, but you can request to play with the beta version here. One big change is the level of personalisation. For example, when you set it up, you can tell the program to remember your home and work address to make it quicker to find directions to and from a place. You can also tell it to remember your favourite restaurants / cafes / businesses by saving them or reviewing them, and the program will remind you about them if you're in the area again (although, that could be a bit annoying...)

How is it that Google knows exactly what your mean, even if you don't type in to the search exactly what you mean? I just completely mis-spelt the name of a Perth suburb in the search box, but it still found it for me. I put the name of the vet clinic I went to today, just Hanley's Vet, and it gave me the address perfectly. No need to worry about addresses any more, just use a name.

Another good thing is the real-time information. Like you can see the traffic speed on the different roads along your route, and if they are red (colour code for slow-moving) you can drag your route away from these areas. Like the old maps, you can see the distance and the time it will take with various forms of transport (now including flight!). Even hiking tracks and designated bike routes are given - yay! One thought - this is a desktop / laptop program... it's not for mobile devicces. But isn't maps most useful when you're on the go??


Today I had to take my two kittens to the vet to get sterilised and microchipped. I used Maps to find the quickest route of course, but on the way back I wanted to stop off and get some samosas from my favourite Nepalese restaurant but I wasn't sure if it was open at 5pm. The new Maps could've told me, but the current one can't. I ended up going to the UrbanSpoon app for that info and a menu (although found out later that the prices were from 2 years ago!). I wonder if I'll be able to see my cats' microchips blipping away on Maps one day... ; )

By the way, Hina and Mochi (that's Princess and Rice Cake in English) survived their operation and are recovering nicely!