Facebook

I have been on Facebook for a while now. I have been contacted by a librarian I used to work with, 2 people I went to high school with, 2 people from college, and someone with my last name from Australia.

I like think the sharing of bookmarks and searching library catalogs are good features, but the social part of the social networking is much more fun.

I am also on Myspace, where some of my friends include the ALA and the library another of my friendes works at. Queens Library should get a Myspace page.

Online producitivity

I have been using Google docs for a while now. It is great for when you have a computer at home and a computer at work. I can save my stuff and access it from anywhere with an Internet connection. I tried using Google presentation for my NYLA presentation, but I ran into some problems with editing the slide show. This is when I discovered www.slideshare.net, which lets you post a PowerPoint presentation.

Another note for everyone, on my computer at home, I use Openoffice, www.openoffice.org, which is an open source software application suite. (Like Microsoft office) It's free, and easy to download. So if you don't have Microsoft Office on your home computer and need word progressing, et al., try it. Since it's open source, bugs and glitches are corrected by the users.

More wikis

I didn't edit a wiki entry, because I had previously created a wiki. I haven't done much with it, but I think do more now. Here it is if anyone wants to contribute. http://telref.wikispaces.com/.

P.S. signing up for your own wiki is pretty easy.

Wikis

I like the concepts behind wikis, that they are collabritive. They remind me of the "olden days" when librarians had notebooks or rolodexes on the reference desks where you could put the information that answered the common questions you were asked, such as "Where is the neares Post Office?". I think wikis would be particularly useful for local history and geneaology, where human memory is often used as a reference source.

Wikis are also good for other stuff. I really like the Muppet wiki http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.

library 2.0

I have a many perspectives about web 2.0 and library 2.0 in the last year or so. There seem to be some people that want to do new things just because they are new. I feel that some perspective is in order. We all need to look why we are doing and changing things. Will this make information easier to find or will it alienate some of the library's customers (and not just the older people, some younger people don't want to learn yet another new thing).

I am also concerned that library 2.0 many turn out to be another library fad, having seen a few.

Just my observations on the 2.0 thing.

technorati

Technorati is fascinating, it makes it easier to find the blog postings. But I don't like the way there site is organized. Even after their recent redisine, it is too clutter. I don't like clutterer results pages, because I have ADD tendancies and get too distracted. Then I find all kinds of interesting things to look at. It gets overwhelming and I prefer simplier designs, like the Goggle blog search. (Google also highlights my search term for me.) But I did find this on Technorati http://gothamist.com/2007/12/13/bloomberg_libra.php

del.icio.us

I am trying to catch up on my 23.5 things, I am up to del.icio.us. It seems like a good idea to have a departmental account, which we do, so that we can share websites, etc that are usefully to everyone, but now I have another username and password to remember.