Entering into the blogosphere...

I've had quite a lot of fun setting up my blog this week. This isn't the first blog I've ever had - I had a Xanga blog many moons ago, which wasn't very successful mainly because I lead a boring life and never had anything of interest to say! That said, I still had one faithful anonymous follower!

It's also been really interesting reading some of the other '23 Things' blogs that are out there. It's great to see the range of people who are taking part and their differing perspectives on things. I love the fact that we're all different : )

I think blogs are a brilliant idea and can definitely have the potential to serve a good purpose but I do wonder how much specific library blogs are looked at by readers. Here at the Health Care Libraries we currently just have the website, which has a newsfeed (that readers can subscribe to) detailing the latest library information. I wonder whether a Health Care Libraries blog would catch on with our readers...

The joys of iGoogle...

When I first heard about start pages like iGoogle, I have to confess, I wasn't convinced about them. Internet sites I regularly want to visit like BBC news and weather are listed at the side in my 'Favorites' on Internet Explorer and this system has been working well for me for years. However...I am now a total convert to iGoogle! It's just so convenient having gadgets and feeds from websites I frequently visit all on one page. No more faffing around in the 'Favorites' bar for me! And, of course, I love anything that can be customised...

So on my iGoogle here's what I've added:

• Time & date - set to GMT


• BBC News - World Edition


• BBC Weather - set to Oxford


• Dictionary.com


• Wikipedia


• Google Map Search


• Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day


• Train Journey Planner


• Babylon Translation Tool


• Tetris (I couldn't resist!)


• And last but by no means least...Facebook!
  

Here are a couple of screenshots of what it looks like -

There are so many gadgets you can add it would be very easy to get a bit carried away. I have 11, which is definitely the limit I think!

Starting out in the land of Web 2.0...

As soon as I heard about 23 Things Oxford the geeky side of me got quite excited. I've grown up with the internet and use it a lot but things are constantly changing on the web and I know there's still so much I can learn! I've had a blog before, go on Facebook far too much and know all about Flickr, but I've never set up an RSS feed and don't really know what widgets or wikis are, so I'm looking forward to finding out more. I hope that by participating in 23 Things Oxford I can learn new ways of getting the most out of the internet and discover how to use these tools to benefit the Health Care Libraries...