Hello! This is my first go on Wetpaint so anything could happen!
Really enjoyed the conference, it's so useful to hear about what other authorities are doing, and the successes and problems they have encountered.
Just to keep you up to speed with what Newcastle Libraries are doing:

Newcastle City Library Service Myspace - this has been up and running for around six weeks or so, and still needs a bit of "tarting up" shall we say. We're hopeful that when we put events and more pics and videos up that we'll attract the sort of igeneration users featured at the conference.

As I am writing this our council website is down, so I can't show the link to a blog we have running from the libraries pages. Will try again soon...

...Second try. I'm at work on a Sunday (enough said) so what better time to add the link to the Newcastle Libraries Download Blog. This came about after we set up a "download pilot" in three of our bigger libraries, enabling customers to access itunes, e-music, Tesco download and other (legal) download sites from these venues. We set up the blog in order to ask users what they thought of the service, and whether they would like to suggest other sites we could add to the pilot.

I must admit, there hasn't been much response as yet to the blog, but it's just been added to the libraries homepage, so we're hoping that might spark some interest!

Back again (about a fortnight later) - I should also have mentioned that we've been allowed to link to Myspace from the council website (I think I remember people from other authorities saying they'd had problems getting permission for this) and we've got a webcam of our City Library being knocked down and now rebuilt City Library Webcam . You can also watch a time-lapse video of the demolition of the library, painstakingly put together by our E-libraries Support Officer David Jobe. I hope this doesn't sound like trumpet blowing too much, but we've also made a podcast of Newcastle's Head of Libraries and President of SCL Tony Durcan in conversation with Richard Wallis from Talis available from the libraries site.

We're looking at using Vanilla or possibly wetpaint to create a forum for local history folk to share ideas and tips online, but we need to put a business case in place to do this first...

Andrew Scrogham
Newcastle Libraries