Mashups aren’t us

Call me a Luddite.  I don’t get it.  The “most popular mashups” are a snooze.  I want to shout, “Get a life!  Go feed the homeless!  Give blood!”  Perhaps mashups will evolve to a cure for cancer, but I’m not seeing it.   They look really useless.

On the other hand, searchrolls look keen.  If it can save searching through countless self-referential blogs to get a survey of what they are writing on a topic, then it’s heading toward the cancer cure level.   What is being written about privacy focusses first on political efforts to invade individual privacy.  Secondly, there is blogging about privacy being valued differently by older or younger people.   Younger people seem comfortable exchanging some privacy for greater access.  When the librarians speak of their own thoughts, they are about protecting privacy.  That’s the librarian’s instinct!

YouTube & Podcasts, re: libraries

This video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_uOKFhoznI

 

is a panel on planning for Library 2.0 at UC-Berkeley.  Looks really cool.  I want to watch this!

 

Podcasts, good ones, are a fine way to communicate to media-oriented users for the sake of orientation, announcements and training.  It’s also a fine way to present broadcasts from the collection if copyright issues are dealt with. 

 

Photo Op!

What’s not to like about adding photos to library materials?  Pictures get and hold attention much better than text.  Could anyone resist looking at my twin grands in this picture?  How much more compelling would library photos be?  The problem is how to choose the right service that will be the standard for the organization, so that more than one person can manage the display of whatever it is.  You need several people who are facile in using the service.  The service has to be simple and flexible enough to allow for creativity to grow.  You need policies (hate that word) on what can be used and how to observe copyright. 

Regarding Google docs

This is the best yet.  Collaborating on a paper can really be a logistical mess. This looks like a great way to get the job done!  It’s dependent on central storage space for the documents, and whatever that costs, or however that is secured will determine whether this solution will be accepted.  But the demand must be huge for it to be a success.  Any obstacles will likely be overcome.

There already is, and in future will continue to be demand for computing power that is not tied to a specific station.   Apps built to enhance work that is free of a single workstation will succeed so long as the work is secure and private.

<iframe src=’http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?docid=dhdp76wv_1cgw3cvf4′ frameborder=’0′ width=’410′ height=’342′></iframe>

Facebook and MySpace and InLine, oh my!

Social networking would be useful for professional networking and recruiting.  There’s always been a collegial component to all this.  These tools make it so easy to connect and converse. 

MySpace and Facebook for the library?  If it serves to link users from those utilities to our offerings, that’s great.  To design a parallel universe for these utilities would be redundant.  However, they trigger ideas of where we could be heading with our offerings to make them more functional and appealing.

We’ve seen with other net applications that they start out great and get overrun by nuisance communications that undermine their usefulness and focus.  This is my main privacy concern.  The more open the resource, the more junk, the less productive.

Facebook and MySpace rely on intuition to guide the new user.  My intuition doesn’t always guide me to be able to do what I want on these utilities.  Some instruction, help buttons, explanations, in the right place, and also an overview, would be welcome.  There’s too much learning curve.  Also too much clicking and mousing to navigate.

What is the difference between a blog and a wiki?

A blog has consecutive entries which can be in the form of a journal, or questions and responses.  It’s linear.

A wiki can be layered with multiple pages on separate topics or for different purposes so that a higher order of organization is achieved. 

Blog for a day

Now is the time for all good libns to figure out how this works.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!