Library 2.0 summary

This has been a nice project (although I have one entry left) and an excellent idea. Unfortunately the circulation staff here at Morrison didn't have easy access to the internet and I know they were struggling down there to get this done. I hope someday soon circulation staffs will have internet access in their workrooms and at the front desk. I do not see any reason to handicap them so with all this talk of web and library 2.0.

I think the one of the 'things' that really surprised me was the wiki we put together. That was just like a bulletin board (or sandbox as some put it) that we could all play with. I find wikis very intriguing and I think the sky is the limit with them.

I guess what I like most about this project was that many of the websites out there that many people use and enjoy are now being embraced by libraries and businesses. There is more of an acceptance, it seems to me, of the internet. It's been demystified rapidly and projects like this will help library employees to stay, if not on the edge, then at least near the front with their internet know-how.

#15, the reading I saved for last

I hate to admit it but professional reading puts me to sleep. Mostly because %75 of it is filler and you have to slog through all that to get to point the writer is trying to make. Micael Stephens "Into a new world of librarianship" has a better ratio of content to fluff. I like that he maintains that technology for the sake of technology is a bad approach. He knows that the essential face to face interaction of our profession is one of the things people enjoy. That's why they come into the library, we just use our new tools to help them find more of what they need. Online resources are a good example. I can offer a user so much more information now than I could a few years ago. I can say here's a book, here's a magazine database and here's Wikipedia. Go crazy, kid.

Reimer's "To Better Bibliographic Services" has a great point about adding web features to catalogs. It seems that PLCMC is going in this direction and I hope our new catalog gives users all the options they desire. I think our catalog should someday allow the user to choose his own color scheme and text font and anything he or she chooses to customize. It's what people want and, from what I understand, is what made Myspace the success it is.

Thing #19

One of the first 2.0 things I guess I ever messed around with was the Google start page which I see is on this list. I used it for a while but it just didn't have enough space to do all the things I wanted. I guess the number of items I preferred to have access to couldn't fit on the page so I had to move on to Bloglines and Furl.net Google still has my email traffic and my word processing documents so they didn't lose anything there.

Wiki Sandbox

I started the voting for the green anole in favorite pets. It looks like they won in a landslide. Go green anoles! I had fun with the Wiki sandbox. It looks like more than a couple of people returned and kept playing with it. By adding fake votes to the green anoles I started a fun competition with the dog and cat people. It was like tagging a wall with a gang sign.

Online productivity

I've been using Writely.com for a while now and it's been bought out by Google and is now known as Google documents. There still are some bugs to work out in the word processing program but it is nice to be able to access my work from anywhere and not have to worry about losing my flash drive or discs.

Video websites

I've been messing around with Youtube for over a year now. One of my favorite searches to do is plugging in the word NASCAR along with the name of the track they raced at most recently. You can always find a video or two made by fans in the stands and these videos give you a completely different perspective than the view you get from network television. If you do this search be sure to sort by dated added.

Net Library

I am currently downloading "God Wills it" a book about the crusades. I've done some searching before but I have never actually attempted to download a title. I am still more than a little disappointed that I can't get these titles in mp3 format so I can put them on my Ipod. Maybe someday?