Let's stir up some friendly competition - Thing 19

I looked through the site NowPublic.com. It is a site which is comprised of world news, reports, pictures, facts, opinions and breaking stories of anyone who wants to post on the site. I read through the ranking system and was intrigued by what the site is actually out to achieve. It states that "the more you contribute and get involved, the more you’ll move up". Anyone can post and move up in getting points to move their stories higher up in the leader board and onto the front page. I liked how this work as any person is given the chance to tell the rest of the reading world whatever they have found out or think the others need to know. However, I do know that because of how the information is submitted, it would be harder for me to take what I read there and believe it fully. It would take more research on top of it to gain the authority needed for the information read.

I'm not sure how this concept would fit into the library world. There are many libraries which already do many wonderful interactive pages for book reviews or to facilitate community involvement. Maybe people like to work for points, though. And for bragging rights. And if we assigned points or stars to each person who posted reviews or made comments, it would spark more competition and therefore more interaction?? I like that idea...

Thing 18 - Googledocs

As I looked through Google-docs I was struck with how much more it resembled an email creation screen reather than a Word docuement interface. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I'm still not sure since I was expecting a little more intense interface to write in. But regardless, I still see this as having great potential for use in the future. I especially like the option it gives you to always have access to the document no matter what computer you are working at instead of worrying where it is saved or not. A good tool which seems very useful for real life needs.

Thing 17

Not sure if we are supposed to blog about Thing 17 but I will anyway. I posted on the favorite blog page and then tried posting on the favorite vacation page. Interesting way to gather information or ideas...

Thing 16 - wikis

For me the most interesting ways to use a wiki is in the more creative ways that are interesting to many different types of people. I especially loved the concept of the booklovers wiki found at http://booklovers.pbwiki.com/Princeton%20Public%20Library because of how it got a large variety of people involved in editing and adding content in the forms of books reviews and analysis points. The wikis concerning AlA conference and ones on library success are useful as well, but they don't have the same excitement as the booklovers wiki. They only focus on getting already involved librarians involved in the posting and editing in the wiki and therefore are less outreach oriented. Helpful and useful in their own right but definitely not as fun or as interesting to most library patrons to be using.

And looking at this wiki in particular really made me want one for "my" library. How sweet would that be to be able to read comments on books and magazines from my own fellow Omahaian books lovers?!

Thing 15 - Library 2.0

The term Library 2.0 DOES mean many things to many people. However, for me it elicits images of a higher tech library than the one we all work in now. Library 2.0 would seem to be the information portal which is not held down by the four red brick walls but is much more interactive with other nontraditional forms of retrieving or using information. Like this whole series of web 2.0 options. I have seen many different forms of technology which could be very useful in marketing or building the usability of the current library for our patrons and for ourselves as well. Now to get that ball rolling towards making library 2.0 a reality....

Thing 14 - technorati again

In looking at technorati again, I still am not totally impressed with this technology option. I tried the different searches as we were told to do, and did not return many different results. The tagging in technorati also seemed normal to all other tagging options I have been in contact with. Overall, still not impressed with this tool.

Maybe my apathy to this web tool is tied to my disinterest in most blogs. A select few interest me for their content or scope or for the authority of the author(s), but I do not spend enough time online reading blogs or trying to find blogs to read, that technorati would be of much use to me. However, if one was into reading different blogs or into working on keeping up with that kind of news, this would be a good tool to use.

Not yummy but at least it's useful: Delicious, Thing 13

I browsed through Delicious and was intrigued by the capabilities of such a tool. I especially was drawn in by the beelerspace comment about how similar delicious was to gmail with its flat hierarchy. I love how flat hierarchy works as well, as I am able to quickly move from idea to idea, from piece of information to piece of information without continually switching folders or frames or whatever might be organizing all the little pieces. And with clouds of tags to quickly glance over, I see many different similar topics which I hadn't thought of before, kind of like the search tactic used by library patrons to look for similar books on the shelf around the book they found in the catalog. Overall, a useful tool to remember for the future!