Away from the "icebergs"

All of the perspectives in the Web 2.0 OCLC Next Space Newsletter are interesting and exciting, but for us, not yet terribly realistic. In the "away from the icebergs" essay, the "just in case" paragraph caught my attention. One line reads, "As a Web 2.0 reality continues to emerge and develop, our patrons will expect access to everything - digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc." As I look at our customers at the computers, they are currently stymied by their inability to get onto Myspace or YouTube due to our bandwidth issues. The technology is moving too fast for us. By the time we are up and competitive, the technology will be changing yet again, and we may not be prepared. Does this mean we shouldn't try to offer the customer everything? No, but we need to take it one step at a time. The patrons who are truly using these new technologies have the means at home or at their jobs to do so; our users are usually those without computers at home, or those whose printers have run out of ink. They don't come in asking if they can listen to someone's latest podcast, or ask if we can help them set up blogs. They come in to check email, check myspace messages, play video games, or print driving directions. They're miles away from doing EVERYTHING at the computer. I think our books are safe for a while yet.

#14: Technorati terror

Technorati has shown me that there's a scary amount of information out there for people to read, digest, reply to, discard, lie about, go on and on about, etc. A FRIGHTENING amount. And what's even more amazing to me is that people do all these things, about anything and everything! Boing boing. Gizmodo. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe. Do I have to get through all this stuff just to get where I could have gotten with a smaller tool? I still need to be convinced about the usefulness of this one. I think we're really in geekworld now. (As if we weren't already there!)
I am not going to tag my posts with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. It's a privacy thing...again. This post is already available to too many people.

delicious (I'm annoyed by the name and the periods)

I tried to view the tutorial four different times today, and each time, this is the message I received:
ERROR: www.library2.0.ottergroup.com is temporarily unavailable or does not exist. Please check the address and try again.
So I went on to look at some of the other things that were recommended. I did visit some bookmarks at PLCMCL2; interesting stuff, but WAY too much to take in at one sitting. Whoever said we could do these tasks in 30-60 minutes a week was dreaming!
The bookmarks in one place is a very useful idea. I have to think on where I might find this most useful in my job; readers' advisory comes to mind.

Addendum:
After spending some time with the library sites that have delicious bookmarks, I feel comfortable in saying that I understand the use of and importance of these bookmarks. I certainly learned how to recognize them, and I won't be left out in the cold when I visit sites with these bookmarks. Although there may never be an occasion in my life to create any of these bookmarks, since I really do value my privacy, I can see how I can benefit from knowing
what they are and how they work.

roll your own woes

I can't make this work. I created a list of cruelty-free personal care products sites, but I can't get it from the rollyo site to this blog. I'll revisit this later. I've spent enough time with it for now.

My current readings library

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/catbird1



This is a pretty cool way to keep track of recent readings. I don't anticipate putting my actual personal library in a list anywhere, but it's good for adding stuff as I read. I can see using this for a readers' advisory tool.

generating lemonade

Make your own at ProfilePitstop.com

MERLIN and other blogs/feeds

There are not enough hours in the day or days in the week to explore all this stuff. I checked in with Merlin, signed on, and got yet another acct. to keep track of. Pressed some keys to go here and there. Moved on to other search tools. Technorati Blog Search is especially impressive. I looked at some Harry Potter feeds. However, I just don't envision spending much time using any of this stuff. Perhaps the future will show me otherwise. At least I'll be prepared.