My first thought on this course is a huge thank you to the organizers! It was exactly what I needed. For months, I had thought of some of these technologies--particularly blogs and wikis--and would think that I needed to learn to use them. But I didn't know where to start, and it's just one of those things you can always put off until tomorrow. The course was exactly the impetus I needed to learn.

As for most of the other technologies--well, it's embarrassing to admit, but I knew nothing about them. I had no idea that something like del.icio.us or Second Life existed. I had heard of Flickr but didn't know how it was used. I am now an avid user of two out of these three I mentioned. (Second Life may still be one of those things I can put off until tomorrow!)

Using the social software we've studied in Five Weeks to a Social Library, the first need I would like to address at our library is that of internal communication. An internal blog would greatly enhance our communication, particularly among librarians who take shifts at the Reference Desk. (For example, by not spending time trying to troubleshoot the same printing problem another librarian just dealt with an hour earlier. Or not repeating the same search for the same reference question.)

Okay, I was only vaguely aware that something like Second Life existed. No idea how much you can do with it--or how much money people can spend! The idea that real-life businesses are setting up virtual counterparts and actually making money off of them is astonishing. Buying clothes in a Second Life store that has a real-world presence in your local mall? Even stranger, paying such large sums for property, or rentals!

As a creative writer, I can understand the lure. I think I would enjoy creating an avatar and exploring the world. I can even see myself getting addicted.

The library portion of Second Life has me a little perplexed, however. I read the article from the folks at the Alliance Library System in Illinois about their huge Second Life project. (I was tickled by the explanation that they started with a small rental property but eventually needed to expand and bought an island!) They were excited to start this project because of the need, as they put it, to go where their users are.

I loved seeing all the ways libraries are using wikis this week. My library's most urgent need for social software (in my humble opinion) is better communication among staff. In particular, I'd like to find a better way for reference librarians to communicate with one another about reference resources, but also about what happened on previous shifts at the desk. (For example, the print management system is down, and we've already submitted a request for help. That sort of thing.)

A wiki seems best to build a knowledge base of reference resources. But I think we need a blog for sharing the little tidbits about what's been going on at the desk or in the library that others should know about.

I just went to try out Jotspot and was met with a screen announcing it was acquired by Google and they were not accepting new registrations at this time.

Is this something new? (Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere and I missed it. I promise I've been taking notes on all kinds of wikis. So many that I'm getting confused!)

On a personal note, I love the idea of delicious for keeping up with websites for reserach projects. I do a lot of research for writing projects and have found it difficult to organize the material and sites I find. I might be a little concerned, though, if I were researching a dissertation, for example, that delicious might go bankrupt or sell out or crash--and there would go my research. Maybe this is a little far-fetched if it's a fairly big concern like delicious. Then again, life's uncertain. I guess I'm used to thinking of how to back up everything! Any thoughts?

As usual, everything is new to me this week! I just tried de.licio.us, and it's fun and intriguing. In conjunction with that, I just read articles about a couple of new ideas to me--the "Long Tail" and folksonomies. As for folksonomies, people seem to have the same concerns that I've always heard about keyword searching versus controlled vocabulary in our OPACS and book cataloging. Keyword searching is more flexible and intuitive, but you may miss things if you don't guess the right keywords to search. Plus you get a lot of irrelevant results. Controlled vocabulary turns up better results, but it can be difficult for our students and patrons to come up with the right terms to search. In the case of library catalogs, I always like a combination of attacks--try the keywords, then when you find something good, look at the subject headings and try that. The folksonomies and tags in delicious are great, but you don't have that follow-up option of subject headings. So I guess you may miss some things--but you will also discover more information than you'll ever have time to absorb, anyway!

Unitil the last week or so, I basically had no dealings with blogs. I've certainly never blogged myself, and though I knew of two or three I would like to keep up with, it just didn't happen. I would forget to check them, or just couldn't find time. I even had a couple that emailed their new posts to me, but that didn't work either. Those posts were buried in emails that needed to be dealt with immediately, and I put them off until later--and usually didn't get back to them.

Well, I'm now officially hooked. I signed up with bloglines and I've added a couple of blogs every day. Just now I added a search to my feeds. What a great idea! Now when someone on a blog posts on this subject, I'll know about that, too. Not only are my new posts all in one place, but I go look at them when that's what I'm ready to do--not when I'm trying to deal with email questions, problems, etc.

Here's a question for everyone. Does anyone have a great way of discovering particular types of blogs?

Here's an example. I wondered if there are any specifically written by older people, about their issues. I tried Google's blog search, but mainly came up with lots of individual posts about the elderly from random blogs. Is there any way to search for blogs as far as their main theme, or authorship, that sort of thing?

Thanks!

Robin

Wow! I've been trying to digest all this new information this week. One of my proudest accomplishments was figuring out how to use bloglines. I signed up for feeds from 10 blogs. Some of them I searched out using Google's blogsearch. I also put the notifier on my desktop, so I have a feeling I will now become a blog addict. (I really hadn't been reading any before.)

As far as what makes a blog successful, my ideas are probably pretty obvious. Most of us probably start blogs because of our needs (to market out product, to express ourselves, etc.) But for people to follow your blog, you have to give them something they need or want. Helpful advice, or entertainment, whatever.