Thing 17: delicious

I've used delicious before, and I think it's a fab idea! All my favourite web sites accessible on the same page... from any PC... that's got to be a good thing?!

I find the whole concept of social bookmarking, social networking and folksonomies fascinating - could this be the collective unconscious made tangible? Will the rules of cataloguing and classification become redundant or are we allowing the patients to take-over the asylum? The debate rages (in more than one forum) as to whether it's a good idea to abandon traditional, libraryish ideas such as authority control and subject headings, but if these "old fashioned" approaches to information are no longer relevant, how do we stay informed? Perhaps social bookmarking sites will become the new authority control?

Thing 16: iGoogle

iGoogle is a great idea for people who use lots of different web tools and want to have everything easily available on one page. I tend to use favourites and bookmarks, but have often "lost" links to well-used sites, so this could be a solution as iGoogle can be accessed from any PC.

Thing 15: Google Book Search & Google Scholar

Although the search worked for both Google Book Search and Google Scholar, the results were patchy. As a libraryish sort of person, I know that library catalogues or OPACs have been designed to guide users to the most relevant items and will be linked (through classification systems, metadata, subjects, indexing, etc.) to other useful items in a clear, meaningful way. Both Google Book Search and Google Scholar appear to produce a list of hits in a seemingly arbitrary way, so it's not that easy to know how useful results will be? I know that there are advanced search options available, but I suspect the majority of Google users don't want to be bothered with this... the same way most library users don't want to be bothered with advanced search options in OPACs!

I do like the option to search for items held in a variety of libraries, but I would probably continue to use a service like Libraries Australia or the Australian Libraries Gateway from the National Library of Australia to find items held in other libraries - and trust the results.

Thing 14: Posted from Google Docs

One of my favourite quotations:

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age — why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? We are ashes and dust.

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Maud, Part I)

Thing 13: Google Maps

It's amazing how detailed these maps are, and also a bit scary! I can see my house, cars parked on the street outside, even my rubbish bins - not very aesthetically pleasing, but certainly realistic.

Google Maps is really useful if you need to find your way round an unfamiliar place or for directions to a particular spot. A slight drawback is that satellite imagery can be patchy for some areas (I wasn't able to see Philip Island in close detail) and images can date quite quickly.

Overall, it's easy to use, but somehow doesn't seem as friendly as looking through Melways !

Thing 12: MySpace & Facebook

I suppose I had to give in eventually and add a profile to Facebook ! Having done that I'm now wondering if I'll be bombarded with notifications of interest, poked or spied upon (who knows how many "lurkers" might be out there?) or pretty much ignored... and which would be worse?!

However, the potential to contact huge numbers of people must be a bonus for libraries and I can see how MySpace or Facebook would allow many libraries to advertise their presence and make people more aware of what they are doing.

Things 10 & 11: RSS Feeds & Blogs

As stated in the VU 23 Things blog posting for RSS feeds & blogs, Digg is a bit geeky and American centric. However, it is a useful place to start if you're confused by the vastness of the blogosphere by giving the option to search by subject, popularity, etc. Although it was fairly simple to add subscriptions to my Google Reader account, I wasn't able to get any search alerts feeds from EBSCO added, so perhaps this needs a bit more work on my part? Not sure if other people had more success with this or other database feeds?

I like the concept of Technorati but again found it a bit too American centric and had to do a lot of searching before I found any "libraryish" blogs that appealed to me.

I actually found it more useful to go to a site that I'm already familiar with: Internet Resources Newsletter This e-journal is produced on a monthly basis by staff at Heriot-Watt University Library in Edinburgh (Scotland) and it's always chock full of interesting stuff that might appeal to academics, students and more particularly library staff - well worth adding to your RSS feed reader. Each issue features a whole host of useful links and reviews, and includes a section called "Blogorama" - this section highlights "selected interesting blogs, RSS feeds and related news items" and this is where I found some of the library blogs listed on the right.

This has been the most challenging group of Things tasks to complete, but I can see that the ability to aggregate feeds using a reader makes keeping up-to-date much easier, so I will persevere. I can highly recommend Obnoxious Librarian from Hades - and you have to admit we all have days when we wish some of our users to... well, Hades!

Thing 9: Feed Readers

I can see why it might be useful to have a feed set-up for your favourite news site(s), but I can also see that one would rapidly be drowned in a sea of information, especially if you subscribe to more than one feed.

I didn't find Google Reader particularly intuitive to use and although I've set-up some subscriptions I don't think I would necessarily find it helpful to receive news every time there is an update. However, I might find the perfect "libraryish" site and would hate to miss out on the latest developments? The search continues...