LibraryThing is located in Portland, Maine. I used to live really close to there... but now I don't.

Children's Services posts our booklists online as well as providing hard copies for patrons. The integration of LibraryThing into our OPAC would allow us to further justify the merits of the books we recommend, while allowing patrons to browse for books that are similar, or were enjoyed by people with similar tastes. I think the browsing and review features LT offers would be valuable for learning how books have been received.

The tagging feature of this site is very valuable. As I said before, using tagging in conjunction with LC subject headings allows for more percise and relevant matches for patron recommendations and requests.

Thing 12

These sites are pretty neat for finding and sharing interesting articles quickly. I like the user recommendations feature, but there seems to be a conspiracy afoot to determine. Like most things, they seem to be dominated by people who have excessive time to devote to searching the internet for things worth reporting. It would really cool if a library could have an account, and when people are looking for news to report it would all be done under that account.

I don't have a solid opinion on the enchancing or detracting of productivity of these sites. It all depends on how much you use them. If you're a digg poweruser, I would say it is a productivity detractor, especially if you are trying to boost your rating, but if you need quick information to keep up to date on the happenings in the world, these can be very useful.

These sites are dangerous for finding information though. In the time it took me to do this thing I read about 3 articles. They have such neat headlines, I couldn't resist.

Deee Lish Us

Like anything, Delicious can be really useful for researching. A research assistant might have to wade through a lot of crap before finding useful information, but this offers an alternative to standardized cataloging of websites (and possibly beyond). While I'm not in favor of doing away with standard cataloging language, an addition to the research process can be helpful. The old story that no two people will catalog a book the same way holds true for tagging. But what we're offered by tagging in delicious is the ability to make tags for things that don't have subject headings.

Push this into the library catalog and you can create records that utilize both tagging and subject headings for optimal searching of the catalog.

Anyone can edit wikipedia... so you know it has to be true...

Which wiki did you edit?

I like the wiki concept for the ability to edit for clarification and expansion articles in the said wiki. It is a great way to come to a collaborative understanding of materials, and is especially useful when trying to find quick information.

Wikis would be great for troubleshooting technology problems, readers advisory, and guides to local areas.

I, in general, agree with teachers and faculty banning the use of wikipedia for student research. Students shouldn't be using encyclopedias for serious research, why should an online encyclopedia be any different. I went to college pre-wikipedia and I didn't use encyclopedias. Limiting information by format is fine depending on the research being conducted.

I edited the 23 things wiki on cats and favorite books.

Google Docs and Zoho

Google docs was much easier to use than zoho writer. Their features were quite similar, but overall googles ease of use allowed me to edit faster, and save easier. Google docs has the easiest and least frills version of word processing, but if I wanted to write a paper I would use Zoho. The interface reminded me of OpenOffice's word processing software, which is very similar to Microsoft Word's software, so it was all familiar. They both work well, but I would go with google to aid their inevitable takeover of all information.

I think all the Founding Fathers except for Ben Franklin would be freaked out by this crazy technology.

Thing 8 II: The Obligatory Sequel

These creation sharing tools are excellent for both personal and professional use. I used the big huge labs motivator of William Wordsworth in a project for SLIS this semester. The class was an education class and I saw bighugelabs as a great way to broaden the ways that students present their information.

For libraries and personal use you could use picturetrail to share pictures of events, or just day to day activities with your patron base, or with your family. Using picturetrail as a way to increase library website traffic would work especially well if there were lots of pictures of patrons from the event. That way grandparents, parents, and close friends would look at the library website for pictures of their children.

These tools were pretty easy to use. Picturetrail was a bit confusing at parts because it immediately adds all the glitz and glam. It took me a few to figure out how to get out of it. Also, why isn't flickr linked to their site? That would have made things a lot easier for everyone involved.

Thing 8

If man is 5, then the devil is 6... Then web 2.0 is 7

I'm torn about the idea of chat reference at MCPL. The idea seems nice, but I'm not sure about the amount of interest from our patron base. I had the fortunate experience of assessing a chat reference interview for my S501: Reference class this semester. I was expecting a horrible experience, but in the end I had a great and informative interview. It was a chance to see chat reference done right. So my perception has been influenced by past experience. Overall though, I don't know that MCPL needs it. At the college level it works well enough, at least in my case, but it doesn't seem as necessary for us. That being said, I wouldn't mind participating in a study where we put a meebo messenger in the PAC and see where that takes us. Internal use of IM would be great for quick communications, but I don't think it would be beneficial at the reference desk because it is distracting.

Twitter... I don't know about twitter. I used it... it is okay. The real problem I have with it is how trivial it is. I've seen some application of twitter in libraries and it wasn't that useful. The best way I could see using it would be to post events that were happening in the library. The question is would it be a library twitter, or department, or individual. I'm not sold, yet.\

Not getting overwhelmed with Web 2.0. I like it, it is fun for me because I don't usually take part in these things on my own. It is nice to have something to force me to participate in the 2.0 web.

Thing 6 - Part 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I attended the MySpace? Yes! Webinar on Opal. It was a really good webinar, even though I didn't learn a lot about my space. It was much more focused on setting up a myspace page rather than how useful it was for promotion, or other good reasoning for having a library myspace page. This is a really neat way to communicate, I liked how people would try to type funny comments on the text bar at the side. This would be especially useful for step-by-step guides through difficult technology applications, or simple ones, depending on the user group.