Step back in history

Social bookmarking

2008-12-11T05:05:00.000-08:00

I had great fun importing all my bookmarks into delicious and then tagging them and sorting them. I can see I need to be quite specific with my tags or I may never find the web pages again.

I put them into three bundles and now feel they are in some sort of order which I might be able to find them again.

Tags
Top 10 Tags

* Genealogy38
* UK11
* Scotland7
* Ireland6
* New_Zealand4
* WA3
* Australia3
* Maps2
* Work2
* Health2

Tag Bundles3
Genealogy14

* Australia 3
* Bristol 1
* Canada 1
* Cemetries 1
* Crime 1
* Internet_links 2
* Ireland 6
* Maps 2
* New_Zealand 4
* Passenger_List 1
* Scotland 7
* UK 11
* WA 3
* Westray 1

Home3

* Fraud 1
* Health 2
* Renovations 1

Work2

* ALIA 1
* Library 1

Unbundled Tags5

* Genealogy 38
* Kids_online 1
* Moneymore 1
* Tyrone 1
* Work 2

All Tags 24

* ALIA1
* Australia3
* Bristol1
* Canada1
* Cemetries1
* Crime1
* Fraud1
* Genealogy38
* Health2
* Internet_links2
* Ireland6
* Kids_online1
* Library1
* Maps2
* Moneymore1
* New_Zealand4
* Passenger_List1
* Renovations1
* Scotland7
* Tyrone1
* UK11
* WA3
* Westray1
* Work2

Thing 11 - tagging

2008-12-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

I had a look at the various recommended sites and searched on "Northern Ireland genealogy" Mainly because I am having problems researching my family in Northern Ireland so any opportunity I search for leads to them.

The sites had a variety of information although several of them had the same sites, for instance google and zuula had very similar results. Googles search was actually very good - it resulted in some major websites which I knew about but had found through other means.

Delicious was good because it gave me some sites I had not found like "ballymoney ancestry" and "ireland & northern ireland genealogy links and chat". The main problem with them was that different people had bookmarked different pages within the same site so it came up with the same site several times.

connoteo and citeulike were both a bit too academic for this search did not really find anything relevant.

The two library catalogues were pretty good and came up with some great books. Murdoch & Uni of Queensland

kart00 was interesting because it looked different and the sites brought up were not brought up with other sites. I found it a bit hard to use because there was a santa and sleigh over the top and it was a bit hard to read around it.

I would definitely go back to delicious and it confirmed what a good tool google is and of course library catalogues are always great.

I think the best site I came across was one which I had not found before called : John Grenham - Irish history & genealogy Not a lot of hype but a clear informative site with some good links.

Google docs & igoogle

2008-11-25T01:24:00.000-08:00

I had fun using the google documents http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dddg6r34_2cv3gw6c9&hl=en - I managed to insert pictures, insert tables and use colours to create a simple document which was easy to create and looked OK. I think this would be a great tool when working remotely with others, or even if you wanted to work on a project at different times. I liked the ease of the creation.

Igoogle was very easy as well and I had fun changing the americanization into more aussie topics. http://www.google.com/ig?referrer=theme_ign Again you can go mad and add too many gadgets and I played with adding and then finding I did not like them, for instance the flicker photos took too long to download so I got rid of them.

Both of these were great to use, just need a bit of time to play and pick out the more useful gadgets.

Firefox extensions

2008-11-19T05:27:00.000-08:00

I have to say I found most of the extensions a bit unnecessary, or perhaps I just don't like too much fiddling. However, I do like the LibX extensions, this looks really useful for students and staff. I also like the 23things toolbar, lots of quick links. My only problem now is I have so much "stuff" at the top of the screen that I sometimes find it hard to see what I am looking at.

The zotero software looks like it will need a bit of working on. Although I seemed to be able to do the basics I could not do much more than this and ran out of time to try a few different things. It looks interesting and may be an easier alternative to Endnote. The libraries Pam emailed about looked like they had embraced it and encouraged their students to use it.

RSS feeds

2008-11-01T06:13:00.000-07:00

I have set up a genealogical feed from Cyndi's list
- this is an American site which covers a huge amount of information on the topic. I thought I would join the feed to find out about new websites, new discussion about researching and useful hints. When you are researching family history it is easy to miss great sites so it should be useful to find out about better ways of doing things as they become available.

I have also sorted my RSS feeds into files, I have three files, News, Genealogy and Libraries.

7 ½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

2008-10-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3: View problems as challenges
Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7: Teach/mentor others
Habit 7 ½: Play

Of these habits I think the easest for me would be Habit 4 - I do feel I have confidence in my abilities to be able to master new technology. I often feel I don't take advantage of new technology because I choose not to rather than because I am not able to.

The hardest habit I think is the first one making and meeting goals, I find I either make them too vague and wide ranging so I can't tell if I achieve them, or on the other hand too specific and feel I miss the big picture. So as a result I have chosen to include both specific and general goals for this exercise.

Goals :

To keep up with technology
To introduce one new service for patrons using some of these new technologies
Do more with less and let technology save me time
Ensure my work experience remains stimulating and I enjoy my work
Complete the 23 things each week not to fall behind

Toolkit :

I think this need will mainly revolve around software which I will need as new technologies are introduced. I am hoping that it will not be a problem to download this software however from past experience I seem to have a lot of problem accessing new software since I have had a new computer. I will see how this goes.

Family research

2008-10-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have been researching my scottish family on my mothers side, the Hendersons came from a small village in Scotland called Auchtertool. I have managed to find Church records from this village dating back to 1708 and through this I am hoping to confirm relationships and fill in some gaps.

To find this information I have been using the Latter Day Saints website, Family search. This is a great resource for several reasons, one is that it is freely available on the internet, another is that it is worldwide (although USA is most represented) and also it goes back a long way. Some other sites like Ancestry.com do not seem to go back very far mainly because it relies so much on the census which means before 1840 there is little information.

http://familysearch.com

Learning a new technology

2007-09-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

Well I have set up a gmail account, I have set up a very basic blogger - now where am I up too? I feel I know less now than I did before I started! I think I need to spend quite a lot of time to look at how to edit the blogger to get it looking like something. I also need to spend quite a lot of time to look at the features of gmail. Some of it is intuitive but some of it is quite hard to grasp.

What has been very helpful is working in a group, because some people were further ahead than others it means that someone else usually knows what to do to solve that particular problem. However, when it comes down to it I think I learn by doing something quietly on my own so I think I will need to initially work in a group and then have a go quietly later to reinforce what I have found out.

No more time today, but I will try to get back to look at this before the end of the week.