Week 7, Thing 16

Wikis. Well, I love Wikipedia. I think the self-regulating part of it is brilliant, and it works pretty well. However, once again, I have to say that wikis again seem like something similar to blogs, as anyone can post to them and they can be updated and etc. I think it would be difficult for a non-techie (or even the average librarian) to figure out which of these tools would best suit their needs for a project at the outset. It's always easier to figure out what you need after the fact. So, I guess as we have more experience with these tools, the differences will come to mean more to me.

Week 6, Thing 15

I love what Michael Stephens has to say about Library 2.0 controlling technolust and making good, yet fast decisions! I think this is so important for libraries, yet often this goes against the librarian way of doing things. Which made sense in the past, when resources cost an arm and a leg and had to last for years and years. Deciding which biography series to buy really tied you to a certain title for years on end, since you had to keep the original set and then commit to buying a new edition every other year or so in order to keep current and serve the customer. Now, the stakes are a little lower with all the free information out there on the internet. I think that many librarians are unwilling to give up their comfortable tools, even if it means that their customers don't have access to the most up to date tools. For instance, databases: do we really need them? If no one is using them, why don't we just get rid of them? We have so many different databases, and the stats show they are rarely used. Why bother when you can find so much authoritative information on the web? Medline is free, why do we subscribe to so many medical databases? Does the average public library user need professional medical journal information? No, they can find all they need on Medline Plus. Why are we going to all this effort and spending more money to market our databases? Why don't we make a good, fast decision to do away with about half of our databases?
Or what about the uproar caused by the public library who did away with the Dewey system in favor of a bookstore model? They are just responding to their customer's desires. I drove past the Barnes & Noble at Towson Circle the other night at about 7:30PM, and the place was hopping! The cafe tables were full. I wonder how full the library was at the same time?

Week 6, Thing 14

I did a search in the blog directory, tags, and blog posts, and they all came up with different results. The top searches, top favorites and top blogs weren't too surprising - the top favorites and blog contain many of the same blogs. The top searches are kind of funny, which they always are, if you look on Dogpile or something. People can't spell.
I think this would be another good place to find info about things that aren't readily available in traditional resources - new things, technological things, etc. So, I do think this could be helpful.

Week 6, Thing 13

Well, I checked out delicious. It is pretty cool, and it could be useful for many library things. I'm thinking about being on a committee where lots of research is required, rather than sending attachments or having to keep an email that has a link in it, you could create a delicious account for everyone to see, add to and refer to. However, I kind of feel like it's like the WAN for BCPL. Or like a blog, because I could add links to a blog, and then people could add other links in their comments. I guess I just feel like we're starting to get overloaded with things that only do slightly different things from the things they're supposed to improved.

Week 5, Thing 12: Rollyo

This site could be used instead of Bloglines for the casual user, I think, since it searches blogs as well as sites. And I'm not sure why you'd use it instead of your favorites tab. Here's the Searchroll I created. And frankly, I'm not sure how to link to my Searchroll either, and it wasn't completely clear online.
http://rollyo.com/dalidiva/scream/

Week 5, Thing 11: Library Thing

I do like this site. I got a small notebook in my last library class, and I was writing down the title and author of books I read in it. But you know what I really need? A place for me to make a list of books I want to read and haven't yet.
Here's my bookshelf:

Week 5, Thing 10: Generators: Simpsonize Who?

I actually created this image several weeks ago, after watching the Simpsons and seeing the commercial for the Simpsonizer. I love the Simpsons, so I Simpsonized myself, and now, of course, I can't find the image which I thought I saved on my 'puter. I will do some more searching and see what I can come up with.

In the meantime, I used the Sketch Generator (http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php) to turn this photo into a sketch. Cool. I could have saved so much time in art high school with this.