Learngeek

12th AFFHO Congress - a veritable cornucopia of information

2009-04-16T17:23:00.000+12:00

Marie Hickey from Auckland Research Centre attended the Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry from 16 – 20 January 2009.

I attended several talks/workshops. All of the papers (with some exceptions) are published in the Proceedings book Preserving the past for the future which can be found on the shelves in the Auckland Research Centre at 1 GEN.

The basis of the congress was a series of talks and workshops presented by an array of international and national speakers. During breaks attendees had time to speak to stall holders about their wares, websites and archives material. This was invaluable for the Auckland Research Centre as it gave us a chance to dispel the myth that material held relates just to Auckland. As a result of this and arranged visits to the library a number of attendees came in to ARC and had an enjoyable day/s.

John Grenham spoke about Irish census substitutes and the Irish Loan Fund records otherwise known as the Reproductive Loan Fund (not what it sounds). Some of the records for the latter have been digitised and can be found on the following website www.movinghere.org.uk Click on “search our catalogue”, enter the surname in the “search for” box and tick Catalogue of digitised records which is to the right of this. This will bring up the results list and click on the link to be taken to the digitised image. [These instructions are not included in the paper]. A very useful source if your family are found.

Other talks included David Hey discussing apprenticeship records, Sherry Irvine - land records in Scotland, Cathy Pilgrim and the digitisation project of Australian newspapers. The presentation everyone talked about and were impressed by was Elaine Collins’ talking about the 1911 census by satellite.

Attendees tended to be from Australia or New Zealand but there were also a few from further afield. I found attendance well worthwhile as I was able to see and hear about some of the innovative ideas of what is happening in the world of family history as well as what will be available in the near future. Another plus for me was catching up with old friends but the downside was that we were very well fed so I’m sure most of us put on a little weight over the weekend.

These congresses occur every three years with the next being held in Adelaide, Australia so if you have an interest in family history this may be an event worth considering saving up for and perhaps combining it with a holiday.

Not all of the talks/workshop papers have been reproduced in the proceedings book but if we attended one of these, a brief outline will be available at the enquiry desk at ARC shortly.

Where Digital Technologies meet Roast Dinners: the 12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry

Family tree

2009-02-12T14:15:00.000+13:00

Take a look at my family tree

Hot librarian from Springfield

2007-12-05T14:54:00.001+13:00

Hot librarian from Springfield
Originally uploaded by library_mistress

I just found this on Flickr! I'm trying to put this pic on my blog. I'll also have to check out the 'Simpsomaker' site! There are such cool things out there in cyberspace! I don't really know where to begin - the possibilities are endless. I hope this is about 50 words already.

Playing around

2007-11-29T10:14:00.001+13:00

This is a photo of my ex-boyfriend Kermy, he didn't handle the break up very well. Dad says if he doesn't get it together soon he will end up in my lunchbox

Here is my Dad, he has just got a new job and takes it really seriously.

I had to get some extra work so I now work part time in the weekends and at night working for the needy in the community

Thing 23

2007-11-27T10:32:00.000+13:00

Well here we are at the end. Initially getting your head around blogging took a bit of time for me, but as is usual, once you know how it is not an issue. There were some fun stuff to do that I can definitely use and then there are also some stuff that I won't use, but at least I know about them and can join in a conversation.
Other bits I need to go back and play with further to really get my head around it.

This was great fun and a big learning curve for me.

Net library

2007-11-23T15:54:00.000+13:00

Set up an account with netlibrary. Had a search and was surprised at the large number of books, however as I am not a librarian and since I have been playing with this learning programme i wish net library could learn how to tag, it was really slow process turning the page on each book. If i had broadband obviously things would be a lot faster. May try this out on my nieces this weekend and see what their thoughts are.

Podcasting

2007-11-23T15:19:00.000+13:00

Well had a look around podcast alley and this really didn't capture me. Looked very americanised so decided to find something different and searched for some more info on web 2.0 and added in a podcast that i found a tiny bit interesting also took a look around yahoo podcast and really lost interest

You tube

2007-11-23T14:00:00.001+13:00

Had a look around you tube and searched a few more titles. Found the original chesdale cheese advert and then found this beauty from the past that someone has redone. Fred Dagg's You don't know how lucky your are.

Web 2.0 awards

2007-11-23T12:12:00.000+13:00

Went into the fun stuff and had a look at cocktail builder - we are in the process of building a new deck with a bar on it - so i better add in an internet connection - you always need good ideas about what to do with the last bits at the bottom of the alcohol bottles about 2am in the morning and can never find anything.....2nd throughts maybe it would be a good idea not to go there. Anyway cocktail builder was easy to use.

Also had a look at mashups and "Ning" was the most popular site. The most popular site I could find in boxet was Zac effron, as i had no idea who he was i had to look it up and apparently he is in that cheesy disney production high school musical.

Could get really lost in here for hours,but need to move on if i want to finish this exercise

zoho

2007-11-23T12:09:00.001+13:00

Well I thought I would give my reponse in Zoho writer. I am quite familiar with microsoft products, well i was also familiar with Word perfect, dos and some of you may remember the electronic typewriter and even further back the good old fashioned finger strengthening typewriter.

This was very easy to use and I like the fact that it all remains online, you can make it public or private. Something for me to consider for my business at home.

like the emotions button - this is soooo much better than word♣♥

and this is really easy to export to blogger

Wikis

2007-11-23T11:45:00.000+13:00

I think wikis are great, i haven't really spent a lot of time looking around wikipedia so use this time to see what came up. I can see that this would be a lot faster than reporting as they are restricted to publishing times, even on the web and lets face it reporting is only an opinion anyway. One limiting factor is that when you do a search it doesn't tell you where it is in the article and this doesn't help if you bring up articles that look like a book.

I set up the PB wiki for this bit and added my blog to the fave blogs and also my most fave holiday destination, ohhh would love to go back there, it seems to have developed remarkably from my visit 20 years ago - Malawi. The people are friendly, good netballers and did i mention the lake.

Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati

2007-11-23T11:18:00.000+13:00

Started looking around delicious (can't be bothered with the fullstops, and would hate to work there typing that name all day) and can see value in this. Had a look at booklovers wiki at Princeton and though this would be a good idea to promote with our hot summer books campaign. I even got adventurous and setup my own delicious account and got the hang of it and might start using this as my fave lists on my current computer is too long and it is a pain as sometimes I want to use stuff at home but can't remember what the site is called.

Looked at Technorati and coudn't really give a toss about which blog spots are hot or not. Can see how kids could be interested or why you would use this in a social networking capacity, but this one is not for me.

Read a few articles on library 2.0 - and interesting to read the thoughts on the next step to web 3.0 and 4.0. I personally don't get the point of second life - i have don't find enought time to fill up my first life, i do understand that i was born in a different error and I do accept all of this. Interesting to read that one person's thoughts could be that the library reverts back to it's original purpose.

Week 10

2007-11-12T15:18:00.000+13:00

Setup librarything and added my 5 books. Could be handy I spose to keep track of my books, especially if I loan them out. Had a look at Rollyo and see how handy this could be, but am struggling to find out how it works. Might be one of those things you get straight away after a break

Week 10 - Image generators

2007-11-09T13:55:00.000+13:00

Had a big play around with online generator. My blues name is "sleepy mayella hunter" the things I never knew and I also visited doppelme and made a cartoon of myself. The generator blog had lots of things to do and you could spend many hours here.

Also took a look at letter james and you could waste many hours playing around here, quite good fun

Big huge labs was really fun, lots of potential to use this at work and customise your own posters..love this site

Also had a look at librarything. I logged in an added some things to my list but personally just saw this as another thing to log into - i am already starting to lose count

Now having a play with rollyo, i logged in and set up some personal files, but haven't played with it enough yet to form an opinion

Locate a few useful library related blogs and/or news feeds.

2007-11-09T11:54:00.000+13:00

Feedster doesn't work, says it is changing and will be back soon.

Topix was very american dominated with the third top story being that Victoria Beckham's doctors have told her to put on weight. Wanted to add in my 2 cents worth but found I had to subscribe and couldn't really be bothered going that far.

Syndic8 asked me to login and found the layout too busy and hard to read - so decided not to go there

Technorati however did interest me, so I joined up

RSS feeds

2007-11-08T11:14:00.000+13:00

I set up a bloglines account which was pretty easy and have looked around for some RSS feeds to link to. The only thing I can think is that the number of updates could become overwhelming and that you could spend your whole day reading information rather than doing stuff.....hang on don't I do that already?

Found a call article on Unshelved RSS feed about pimp my cart - an exercise where they created a competition for local schools to pimp library carts. Apparently it was huge and and cool way to get teens involved in the library as well as being a cheap way to dress up some of the shelves in the library.

New technology

2007-11-05T10:14:00.000+13:00

Checked out Skype which lets you make calls from your computer and looks like it is a type of mobile phone. Looks like an alternative to Telecom and effectively yet another bill to pay for. They talk about free skype to skype calls, but lets face it I don't know anyone that has it and am not likely to look at this again.

Free video calls would be great to talk to friends overseas but my computer is so slow and we only have dial up in our street so it probably would time out before it downloaded

Flickr mashup

2007-10-26T13:35:00.001+13:00

This is a test post from Flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing. I learnt that if you post a link the link can change (dont know why) but think this has something to do with other people sharing the same login. I made a trading card - not sure of what the purpose of this is for and it is a photo of me learning how to read.

Week three - flickr

2007-10-16T10:08:00.000+13:00

This week I have learnt about flickr and managed to setup an account and post some really cool photos of me and my family. See the folder under learngeek. It took quite a while to get the photos set up and then I had a go at using mappr - this i think has limited use for me. Finding it hard to allocate time for me to play so am going to give it a real bash over the weekend.

I made a trading card - but not really sure of its purpose

Black Books - Lolly

2007-10-04T16:34:00.001+13:00

Week two

2007-10-04T14:32:00.000+13:00

I have even managed to set up a facebook, which I thought would be useful to tell friends about it who live overseas and an easier way to keep in contact....in fact I'm going to tell my sister in Edinburgh about it and encourage her to set up a facebook as it takes far too long on my dial up to download photos.

Bebo,...well I found a song called "Read a Mutha f*"!in book"...what more can I say. Didn't think much of this site. Looking around Bebo looks like a bunch of desparate teens looking for a partner.....and found it a little difficult to read. A lot of information on this site tended to link back to YouTube, and I found a video from the tv show "Black Books".

Myspace tended to be more suitable towards music and promoting yourself, won't be going back there either.

Week one - Bloggin

2007-09-12T15:02:00.000+12:00

This is my second attempt at blogging and I found that setting up this blog was a lot faster than last time.

I've also learnt some new tricks along the way and thought I'd share with you some of the stages in my learning process. They were:

1. Yipeee how cool we are going to learn some new stuff. I wondered what the kids were talking about, but never got around to giving it a go.
2. Getting a little frustrated (deep breath) and learnt that trying the same thing over and over and over and over won't work
3. Getting really fricken frustrated. Want to bite someone's head off - there must be something wrong with the internet
4. Ahhhhhh!, pulling out clumps of hair
5. Got up the nerve to ask someone else to show me how to tab (shift tab)
6. Yehhh it worked! I knew I could work that out, I thought it might have been harder.
7. Cool I can do that, whats next!

2007-09-04T13:19:00.000+12:00

We are a bit pet mad at our house so I've uploaded some photos of our pets in order of hierachy:

Charlie our sulphur crested cockatoo is only 15 and will live up to 120 years. He had a wing amputated two years ago due to cancer and now walks with an even more exagerated Charlie Chaplin walk. He can talk, dance, laugh, cough, is quite partial to anything that you are eating and can be really annoying. He particularly loves a cuddle and a scratch under his wing.

Scott is our ginger moggie. His hobbies include sleeping on the bed, the wardrobe, the car and anywhere sunny. He also likes to headbut people, purr really loudly and annoy Minime.

Minime our tabby likes to eat Scotts food when he isn't looking and brings us presents such as headless mice.

Georgeous George is a giant garami. He follows your footsteps around the room and waits for me every morning at the end of the tank. He likes strawberries, bananas and ham.

Tiki the dog is part corgi, part terrier, but mainly curb-side-special. Hobbies include licking Scott, staring at Charlie or our neighbours cats. Its really wierd but every time she walks past the cat bikkies they jump out and stick to her tongue.