create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

And while I’m not certain it has much relevance in helping us to serve our patrons, it could very well help us keep up in our profession. It is now easy for us to keep up with the latest thought in the library world; just subscribe to some of the feeds by the plethora of professional librarians on the Web. It could also help streamline our staff communication. Instead of cluttering a couple hundred inboxes with news updates, what if computer services, circulation, technical services, the tech reps committee, the management committee, et al had their own blogs, which they would update whenever there is information for the entire staff, and to which all staff members would subscribe on their RSS reader? I think there is some great potential there.

On the other hand, RSS feeds have only added to my informational overload angst. No matter how much we do to streamline the process, I’ll never be able to compile all the information upon which I love to graze down to a manageable level. I have well over two-hundred rss feeds on library science, library-related technology, politics, religion, local thought, graphic design, web design, web standards, Mac/Apple technology, and a few other subjects. There is no way I can keep up with them! The reader is constantly accumulating unread material—material about which I feel guilty that I haven’t found time to read, because I do really want to know.

Curse you, RSS gods, for teasing me with such seductive technology!

Maybe Ireland isn’t our top choice. Maybe it’s Italy, emphasis on Rome. The history, the architecture… Having studied Latin for four years, I’d really like to see one of the most important cities in the history of the planet.

My wife and I long to travel (though as the upcoming map exercise will show, I’ve done pathetically little). And the destination which tops our list? Ireland. We both have been beguiled by the romantic Celtic image. We’d love to explore the Emerald Isle, with its castles, its lush greenery, its jagged coasts, its idyllic small pastoral towns. Oh, I’m sure the dreamy romantic image isn’t accurate, but don’t shatter our dreams yet!

I’ve heard good things about other sites, but I already put a good start in on LibraryThing, and I’m not interested in duplicating my efforts elsewhere unless I figure out an easy way to export/import the information I’ve already entered.

I also ennjoy the fact that I can use LibraryThing to find new books. I’ve often used Amazon, with their extensive reviews and their “also looked at” feature to see what else on a given subject I might like to read. But I would prefer not to use a commercial site for this info (nothing against Amazon per se). These online book databases provide alternative resources.

Can this serve the library? What if the library were to link to the bookshelves of employees on the SLCPL MySpace page? We could use these services for readers advisories (I think they would serve the purpose more effectively than a wiki).

Technorati seems like an effective option for searching for content in blogs. Will it be very useful for research as a librarian? It probably won’t be my first choice, as the blogosphere in general isn’t the most reliable source of verifiable information. Nor does it seem the most efficient source for the type of content I typically seek. But it is good to have yet another option in my toolbelt as I help patrons.

Needless to say, I love social bookmarking! I can access my links wherever I go. And with the advent of tagging, no need to hunt through folders to find the link under which category I ended up listing it (was that “politics”? “Local interest”? “social theory”? Oh @^*$!). I have multiple ways of finding particular links, and multiple ways to sort and list them based on the various tags. Brilliant.

I’m still trying to decide between Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia. I was initially drawn more to Ma.gnolia, because it’s more conciously chosen visual design made it easier to use. Additionally, it had been designed with care for web standards, which I believe are important to the future usability of the web. I think it was initially more advanced than del.icio.us in some other aspects, such as the ability to keep tags private. However, I’ve been trying Del.icio.us as well, and Del.icio.us has some advantages in the manner in which it shares information and helps you find related links. I wish one had a clear cut advantage so that I wouldn’t have to keep two identical lists of links (any suggestions?).

I’ve been using the sites almost exclusively as a repository for my own links, the “bookmarking” aspect. I’ve not experimented at all with the “social” aspect of the sites; no using them to find other resources in which I might be interested. But I can certainly see in theory how it might work. I can see how it could be used for research, though (and here comes the netiot in me again) I don’t see how it would be much more effective than Google. I think both would probably be a gamble in terms of academic research.

Using a social bookmarking site for the SLCPL library links would be a very effective way of presenting our bookmarks. With extensive use of tagging, patrons could easily come up with lists of resources related to their interest from our page. A great way to serve our patrons.

I get the concept. Create an online profile and develop networks of associates of various sorts connected to that profile. The idea is appealing to me. For some time I’ve mulled over the idea of creating a central online repository for all things me; a webpage on which I could provide links to my different blogs, display my art, provide a calendar of community and political events which I wanted to promote, link to the various websites I found worthwhile, etc. SNS seem to fit the bill. But I’m unhappy with MySpace. I can’t seem to figure out how to configure the layout and services the way I want; either MySpace isn’t flexible enough to do what I want, or I can’t figure out the interface. FaceBook seems better, but still not as flexible as I’d like. Both seem more focused on dating and superficial socializing (What is your sign? What are you looking for?) than on meaningful information. I’ll have to keep playing around with them and see if either would serve my needs well enough to keep around after the Library 2.0 program is over.

LinkedIn is another example of my occasional web senility. I get that this is a professional SNS for career development and job searching. But in the limited time I’ve spent sniffing around the site, I’ve been incapable of determining how it is supposed to work.