Q3: Emerging technologies

Most of the library promotes and enhances the services and collections of the communities. To encourage user services, libraries provide our community users with quality information resources and services according to the highest of standards.
New technologies such as some service delivery models allow libraries to enhance services without time and location restrictions. Blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, Podcasts and Instant messaging are some of these examples of emerging technologies.

Blog
The term "weblog" was first used in December 1997 by Jorn Barger to describe personal sites that are continuously updated, with commentary and links. Weblogs do not require the user to first learn a Web Authoring program, such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Nor do they require knowledge of HTML, Web servers, or other Web Technologies.
Weblog software has a free-to-use history, library use blogs as promotional tool as a communication platform such as “Yarra Plenty Blog”. Also, blogs work as library services platform to list announcements such as new books release. Besides, Pollhost Libraries use blogs ass a feedback tool to collect valuable comments from users.

Wiki
Wiki systems are particularly suited to collaborative group authoring of documents and websites. The most famous example of a Wiki is Wikipedia. Offering easy and open access to editing a website obviously opens the door to malicious and erroneous changes being made but Wikis also provide facilities for some users to act as administrators who oversee groups of pages and have the ability to block users from editing. For applying to library, Library and Information Science Wiki (LISWiki) and Library Instruction Wiki are examples for librarians. The Biz Wiki and BookLoversWiki are examples for library users.

RSS feeds
RSS is an easy way for you to keep updated automatically on changes to websites you like. Instead of having to go to websites to see if they contain a new article or feature, you can use RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, to find out every time your favorite websites post something new. The format of the text document is presented as XML. Most of the universities library such as Curtin, Australian Nation University has RSS Feeds. Other from academic fields, companies such as BBC, EBSCOhost provide RSS Feeds.


Podcasts
Podcasts refers to broadcasting programs made available online through a subscription feed such as RSS, to be played on iPods or MP3 players. Podcasting works the same as a standard RSS feed reader, the only difference is that the feed you subscribe to contains an audio file in it. You can listen to the contents of your feed using a reader or aggregator that supports podcasting, or you can listen to them on an iPod or similar device. For instance, VALA2006 Conference which has podcasts their paper delivery. Some podcasts programs such as national treasures and talk are published by Stat Library of Victoria.

Instant messaging (IM)
Instant messaging is a type of real time communication service. It is somewhat like a chat room. Both parties are online at the same time, and they communicate to each other by typing text. Just like telephone reference services in the library, in new generation, IM become one of the communicate services between librarian and users. Examples of IM are Homer Township Public Library and St Joseph County Public Library in USA.

These emerging technologies allow libraries to provide better services to users by simple access to seek out what they desire. However, it is important that these technologies are user friendly and low costs, hence, increase effectiveness to the library.