Investigative Exercise 9 Community Profiles

City of Sydney Council

As of 2006 the population of the area is 180,474 with 53.8 percent males and 46.2 percent females.  1.3 percent is indigenous.  41.1 percent is Australian born while 33.5 percent is overseas born.  Age groups are: 0-17 years 8.3 percent, 18-64 years 83.5 percent, and 65 years plus is 8.2 years.  23.3 percent came from non-English speaking backgrounds.  The top three countries for those born overseas are United Kingdom 5 percent, China 3.4 percent and New Zealand 2.9 percent.  Note where percentages do not add up; this information is according to the 2006 Census and sometimes people chose not to answer certain questions.  Check here for the full City of Sydney Community Profile http://profile.id.com.au/Default.aspx?id=148 and here for the City of Sydney Library website http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Library/Default.asp

Exercise 8 - CURRENT AWARENESS POST

While I share the concerns of many when it comes to the replacement of humans with robots in the library, I believe this innovation will free up library workers to do other taks in the library, such as assisting clients and running workshops or events.

Investigative Exercise 7 Podcats

National Library of Australia
Dr Raymond Choo - My life of in crime
http://www.nla.gov.au/podcasts/talks.html

I've chosen the first podcast on the podcast page for the Australian National Library.  Its an interesting overview on cyber crime presented by former Australian National University student Dr Raymond Choo, who is now a senior lecturer in Information Technology at the University of South Australia.

He explains the various methods and motives of cyber crime.  The motives range from young people doing it 'because they can', to organised criminals after bank details or other private information, to activists out to make a point.  The methods are varied and include the use of fake identities to fool victims into providing information or the use of malware to take control of the victim's computer to acquire their information.

Investigative Exercise 6 Social Bookmarking

I can think of arguements both for and against clients being able to post their own reviews on the library catalogue.  The main reason why this is a good thing is that it gives anubody looking in the catalogue a musch better idea of what the book is about and whether it is worth reading or not, thus heightening client satisfaction.

However these reviews, since anybody can post them, have the potential for extreme bias either for or against the book regardless of its quality.  Thus a good book may not get borrowed so much due to a bad review.  Yet without this function potential borrowers have to look elsewhere for such information as would be provided by client reviews, which many would not necessarily be inclined to do.  Therefore I am very much in favour of clients being able to post their own reviews.

Also, the library I regularly use, Sydney City Library, has this function, although its not something I've really noticed until doing this blog.  So I'll have to keep it in mind next time I want to borrow something there.

Investigative Exercise 5 Social Networking

I can really see no reason why libraries should not get involved in social networking sites.  The majority of young people today regularly use social networking sites - primarily Facebook - and this majority is rapidly growing.  And increasingly there are older people up into their sixties involved as well.  This is a huge market of people to reach out to; and even if we consider local libraries or school libraries whose focus is only on the local munincipality or even suburb, that still leaves a great many client or potential clients to market to and get the message out.  And its interactivity could encourage people to feel that the interests of the library are more closely aligned with their own.  Its also a very cost effective way to advertise services.

Perhaps in the cases of small libraries with limited resources it might not be as feasible since doing so might lead to the detriment of other areas of the library, and the benefits would not be as great due to the library's small scale.  Overall for the majority of the library industry though social networking sites is the way to go.

Investigative Exercise 4 Youtube

This video is about a service being run by the British Library called the Business and IP Centre.  This service is freely available to everybody but is primarily aimed at entrepreneurs just starting out in business.  It is a separate area of the library stocked with detailed information on running a business and is staffed by librarians with in depth knowledge on how to find what the client is looking for.

Investigative Exercise 3 Photo sharing and Flickr

This photo is from the UTS Library photostream in Flickr.  Its showing an entry into a competiotion in the library called 'Spinal Type', where clever and amusing sentences are created suing the titles on book spines.http://www.flickr.com/photos/utslibrary/with/6773532552/