I appreciate the tons on information that is available via podcasting (I've signed up for an RSS feed for a small business podcast in the hopes of tying into my business outreach) but for me it comes down to a matter of time. My life demands that any podcast exposure time comes at the expense of reading time and I'm just not ready to give that up.... yet.
On the streaming music side, I love the new databases that the library has subscribed to. That is the sort of content that I can slip into my life without giving up something else. For me, having music playing in the background is a little different from an audio file where I'm trying to learn something and need to be paying closer attention.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Week Eight
I've had a couple different occasions to use the Google documents feature. For collaborating with folks who aren't all at the same physical location it works quite well. The only (or the biggest) downside is the need for users to create an account with Google... who wants to keep track of yet another account/login/password? Not many.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Technorati
A useful site for trying to track down blogs that deal with a particular subject, such as Spokane. If the library is going to insert ourselves into the blogging world, we'll need to know where our local bloggers are. And here they are, all 284 of them, in no particular order: http://www.technorati.com/blogs/tag/spokane
This could be a useful outreach tool...
This could be a useful outreach tool...
Back to Week 6
del.icio.us: I don't get it. When I'm out and about away from my home or work computer and I'm struck by an information need that can only be answered online I probably have a pretty good idea where to turn. If I don't have a sense of where to go, I'm going to be doing a web search anyway. Bah humbug. If I come across an interesting web site that I feel compelled to create a bookmark for, it is probably burned into my memory deeply enough that I don't have to go to the extra trouble of logging into del.icio.us and searching there. Coupling that with the frequency that web sites change/move/are deleted, del.icio.us seems to be a burden.
As for the tagging, that shows some promise but right now there is so little disambiguation between tags that frequently it is easier to just do a google search on the topic to find similar pages. When I found a page dealing with converting a gas car to plug-in electric, one tag used was "conversions." I clicked on it and was neatly directed to sites that had nothing to do with my desired topic, unless in the time it took for the new page to load I suddenly wished that I had a list of metric-standard conversion web sites.
My review of del.icio.us: Just like most people's relation to the public library, I'm getting along fine without it. Am I missing something?
Once again: bah humbug.
As for the tagging, that shows some promise but right now there is so little disambiguation between tags that frequently it is easier to just do a google search on the topic to find similar pages. When I found a page dealing with converting a gas car to plug-in electric, one tag used was "conversions." I clicked on it and was neatly directed to sites that had nothing to do with my desired topic, unless in the time it took for the new page to load I suddenly wished that I had a list of metric-standard conversion web sites.
My review of del.icio.us: Just like most people's relation to the public library, I'm getting along fine without it. Am I missing something?
Once again: bah humbug.
Sticky Wiki
It seems that wikis would work really well in the library arena when it comes to sharing information within an organization. I think that the content from the intranet could be readily converted to a wiki format. We may not want to give everyone the ability to change the procedures for issuing new cards, but we may want to give everyone the ability to comment on or question a set of procedures. Often we get so enmeshed in our work that it takes an outside eye to point out some obvious improvements to the workflow...
As for the public side of things, I see no harm in creating a page similar to what SCRLD has put together... It does seem that there could be much more nudging of people to the library's resources than what the site currently has. For example, under their "Resources for Business" page there is no mention of what the library might be able to supply.
As for the public side of things, I see no harm in creating a page similar to what SCRLD has put together... It does seem that there could be much more nudging of people to the library's resources than what the site currently has. For example, under their "Resources for Business" page there is no mention of what the library might be able to supply.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Bloglines
OK, I reluctantly admit that my bloglines account may prove to be of some value. As I search for content to put into my upcoming "official" library blog that will be linked to on the business pages, I realize now that all I have to do is point my bloglines dog at various business news ducks (NYT small business page, Seattle Times business news, etc., etc.). Then I can just quickly scan the headlines from the past few days and pull content that I might want to comment on.
The downside of this hyperfocused feed is that it reduces browsing and catching news items of interest that now will fall by the wayside. On the political front, I cringe when I think of the millions of people who sign up for newsfeeds that reflect only their narrow worldview and subsequently convince themselves that the majority of the world agrees with them...
The downside of this hyperfocused feed is that it reduces browsing and catching news items of interest that now will fall by the wayside. On the political front, I cringe when I think of the millions of people who sign up for newsfeeds that reflect only their narrow worldview and subsequently convince themselves that the majority of the world agrees with them...
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