#13 Technology

I love the cartoon - I must admit I was a little bit like that when I did my library course in 1989. I think my hand-eye coordination was not the best, so I can sympathise to a certain extent with people who find the mouse a challenge.

Technology - where would we be without it?

I am very partial to Google and understand it's limitations. Again, don't know where we'd be without such sophisticated search engines. Unfortunately, some people who use Google don't get the results they want, or are happy with substandard results and don't proceed further. Having sat in on AskNow sessions and conducted SLV Chat, I have observed that many people are not au fait with search engines and turn to us to help them. AskNow and SLV Chat are amazing services. I find the idea of instant chat for reference work a very interesting concept. Although, again, many enquirers don't understand the boundaries of this service.

Flickr is amazing - I was particularly taken with a website entitled 'Apartmenttherapy', in which someone has detailed every aspect of her New York apartment, including her shower curtain! The comments on her site were equally as interesting. The first search I conducted on Flickr, was using the search term 'State Library of Victoria' and got over 300 hits - incredible to think that so many people had taken the time to upload their photos of the Library onto Flickr. Some of the images were quite good, too.