Online Productivity Tools, cont.

This showed up, published from Google Docs:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

The quick red fox. . .

Now, where is that Zoho letter??

Wikis

It's hard for a traditionalist (not a Luddite) to fully deal with the premise of wikis as documents that anyone can update, add to, change, etc. I know there are permissions and such, but anyone?? I'm reminded of the example I used to use when teaching about how to determine the trustworthyness of a web site -- I have a cocker spaniel, and there's nothing stopping me from putting up a web site purporting that I am the world's foremost authority and advisor on cocker spaniels, but should you trust my site or the one put up by a veterinarian?

That said -- what a wonderful thing wikis are! I like the Princeton Public Library's Book Lovers wiki, and I learned some useful things from Bull Run Public Library's wiki. (Common Craft is a great resource!) Both of these projects exemplify the "put your 2 cents in" purpose of wikis. And, the Stevens County wiki project -- build a "home-grown" Stevens County encyclopedia -- is good to explore; it includes history, guidebooks, advertisements, and other relevant information about a rural area for which such a rich compilation might not otherwise exist.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

This is a great intro to del.icio.us! I found it on the Bull Run Library wiki.

Web 2.0/Library 2.0

Tom Storey's introductory comments to the Web 2.0/Library 2.0 discussion on NextSpace are valuable especially as he delineates the "Web 2.0 principles of simplicity, rich interactivity, user participation, collective intelligence, self-service, novel and remixed content." Looking for examples of embodiment of these six principles can prove an educating experience.

My favorite of the commentaries that follow Storey's introduction is Michael Stephens' as he discusses the new nature of librarianship. We must never lose sight of "the Library [being] human . . . a social and emotionally engaging center for learning and experience." While keeping the user at the center, we are offered advice and encouragement -- to plan, to embrace Web 2.0 tools, to control technolust(!!), to make good, fast decisions, to be trendspotters, to understand content, and to listen to staff and users. I think the comment about technolust is among the most most pertinent and thought-provoking; it is easy to fall in love with every new thing that comes along, and such "falling in love" excitement is to be cherished. However, such love needs to be able to extend beyond a honeymoon -- to serve real needs of users in an improved way.

A friend in the Dallas area was just telling me last week about her library's difficulty in recruiting librarians that have the "right mix" of basic reference andpublic service skills and Web 2.0 knowledge/skills. Candidates seem to have a preponderance of one or the other. Michael Stephens seems to be encouraging us to attain that "right mix."

Technorati

It seems that doing a keyword search brought up some posts, etc., that are not specifically Learning 2.0. Using the search box at the top of the page and advanced search zeroed in on Learning 2.0, not just Learning and/or 2.0. It doesn't seem to be possible to use the advanced search capability to apply separately to blog posts, tags, and the directory. Many of the same appropriate items came up, though.

It's not really surprising that many of the top favorited blogs are at least somewhat technology related. Boing Boing really is pretty terrific! Top favorited and top blogs seem to run pretty parallel, which makes sense. (I decided I probably wanted to get feeds from lifehack.org [#53], but not lifehacker [#6]). And, the top searches show that we're all interested in the news, whether that's hard news or gossip. The top tags box is fun to scan for ideas for adding tags or for searching.

Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki

Checking out the entries in the Learning 2.0 SandBox has been fun and instructive. I added to Favorite Vacation Spots, Favorite Foods and Pets. Unfortunately, when I inserted a photo of Max, my sweet Cocker Spaniel guy, I seem to not have done the placement correctly. The pets already there disappeared (were overwritten?). I hope they'll come back. . . So sorry.

I recognized Angus and Brody.

I've just added my blog to the Favorite Blogs page.

Del.icio.us

Unfortunately, the 12 minute tutorial video on del.icio.us seems unavailable to view, but the article Several Habits of Wildly Successful Del.icio.us Users is terrific! http://slackermanager.com/2005/12/the_several_hab.html

I did set up an account and posted a few bookmarks. Looking at the del.icio.us pages of some of the libraries listed on MD Libraries Learning 2.0 can lead off in a lot of different, interesting directions. One site that I like particularly is on the San Mateo page, Lib Site http://libsite.org/ .

One of the hardest things about del.icio.us is typing the word, getting those dots in the right places!