#15 Web2.0 Library 2.0 and the Future of Libraries

This topic took me off into reading a few interesting things on Libraries and technology. The most succinct way to summarize what Library 2.0 aims to be about was stated on the blog Digital Eccentric, listed in my Blogs I Like List. From the May 14 2008 post "It's all about having options", I quote:My highly simplified version of his thesis is that Library 2.0 is about control and presentation of data, and how we might give the best access to it.

I think that there are a couple of corollaries to this that libraries have only recently begun to consider and implement. First, there is NO ONE WAY to best provide access, and that providing multiple paths and formats is necessary because we can never imagine what all the potential uses of our data are. Data should be exposed in as many ways as an institution finds sustainable, using appropriate community standards.

The second corollary is that while varied and easy access to data is vital, Library 2.0 is also about the personalization of discovery and use of data. Whether it's applying personal tags or personal filters to improve or focus discovery and retrieval, or applications that can take advantage of Identities and/or other APIs for personal or community-based mashups, it's all about how I might need to discover and use the data versus how Andy might need to work with data, and that those needs will likely be different next month than they are now."
Thank you Leslie Johnston for expressing this.

The other helpful thing I have read is the book: Here Comes Everybody; the power of organizing without organizations,by Clay Shirky. There is so much history, commentary and theory in this book that I will have to reread it. With regards to Libraries, what springs to mind is the observation that when the internet came into use it was thought that people would no longer need to meet together as much, but in fact what has happened is that technolgy facilitates different patterns of meeting and organizing. I see that people are still using traditional library services as well as new services.

#14 Technorati

Over the past couple of weeks I've briefly looked at Technorati. Each time I look at the popular page listings I find that there is a lot of content that doesn't interest me and is not relevant to me. I do understand that it offers an important way of listing blogs and giving searching power. I probably need to spend more time exploring it. When I have looked at Technorati I tend to go off in tangents finding things that are very interesting. Today I came across a Seattle website http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ that give nice lists of blogs in categories for the Seattle area. This is interesting to me as I find it is often the location of a blogger that makes for an interesting blog- the regional flavour.
I have found other blog indexes- Australian ones and specialised blog indexes that present the information nicely.

#13 Tagging and Del.ic.ious

Del.ic.ious offers something we haven't easily been able to do- share bookmarks with colleagues and friends. More than that, it offers the chance to see the bookmarks and labels of other unknown people. I don't particularly like the appearance of del.icio.us screenpages. I do find del.icio.us useful in work situations. I have referred to del.icio.us bookmarks loaded on our library catalogue on a fairly regular basis.

#12 Roll your own search

I found this idea interesting and did the tasks involved in setting up my own search sites. I haven't really seen the potential of this for the libary work I do.

#11 Library Thing

I enjoyed learning about Library Thing. I noticed on many of my favourite blogs, people entered books from their personal library. Now I have managed to do the same.

#Thing No 10 Online Image Generators

http://www.hieroglyphs.net/000501/html/000-042.html

This is my name in Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

A friend of mine once used Hieroglyphic nametags for a training course she was presenting.(The real names were on the back). It is good for novelty value.

A lot of the Online Image Generators could be used to create some fun in a training course or in publishing. There were many more software applications than I was aware of.