Monday, December 7, 2009

Method 5 - Photos & Images

Flickr and other photo sharing tools are awesome in allowing one to share photos and send them to others. Having always relied on the traditional backup means, I had not thought of Flickr as an additional means to storing and safeguarding photos. Tagging photos is a much more effective way to ensure you are able to find a particular photo in the future.

Libraries are able to use photos in a variety of ways as long as care is taken to get permission of individuals captured in photos. A library could create a virtual tour or it could also use photos in a presentation teaching a particular library or computer skill. Libraries can push out favorable publicity for any number of functions it holds from a children's story time to an event for seniors to a ground-breaking of a new library. Photos can, of course, convey a lot more easily many things text can not: the joy of a child's discovery of a book, the look and feel of the resources available in a particular location, and fun that a teenager might be having at a library event. With some guidance any volunteer or staff member could help take photos and share them online. How wonderful for library management or a member of the library's friends group to see pictures of an event they might otherwise not have been able to attend.

Library of Congress


Library of Congress, originally uploaded by Christopher Chan.

Flickr allows anyone to view world libraries from wherever they are at a computer. Through the Library of Congress alone, countless photographs can be shared with others.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Method 4 - RSS and newsreaders

Newsreaders such as Google Reader and Bloglines are very handy in keeping up with information from one's favorite blogs. I have been using Bloglines for several years so I was eager to see if Google Reader provided any distinct advantages. The formats of the readers seem very similar and I have not discerned any significant differences. I'd be interested in hearing what others think.



Reading blogs certainly becomes quite addictive. I look forward to some blogs the way I would look forward to reading a favorite column or comic strip from the daily newspaper. With so many excellent blogs geared to librarians, blogs have become a core part of professional reading. I think it is important to expose yourself to a number of different blogs with various viewpoints and so I keep trading out ones that I follow on my reader. It seems if you are unable to view your blogs for a few days for one reason or another, the readers do not perform with the speed and efficiency they usually do. I'd be interested in seeing if this is the case with Google Reader.

The following link provides a great collection of 50 blogs for librarians:

http://www.getdegrees.com/articles/career-resources/the-top-fifty-librarian-blogs/

Blogs I enjoy are:

http://www.resourceshelf.com/ -- Excellent for keeping up with current information on the web.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/?cid=hp:topnav:cs -- for keeping up with the latest news stories
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/money/ -- helpful information from Consumer Reports


Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Cloud computing - Method 3

⤘The ability to share documents with anyone that you wish and allow them to edit them is extremely handy and cost effective.   This, in many instances, would work much better than using a wiki.   It would appear that Microsoft will have to come up with a worthy competitor to Google Docs and Zoho.    For most of the population a suite of Office like products with word processing and spreadsheet capabilities is about all they would need.   Even many businesses, it would seem, would not need to rely on purchasing new versions of Microsoft Office products. 

 

Not being technologically savvy as most, questions do arise:

 

⤘   How will Google and other companies support the free access to these shared items?

⤘   Will there eventually be limits on how far back or how much can be stored in these platforms?

⤘   An individual and person guiding an individual in these tools will have to be careful not to

      share sensitive information that might impact negatively their relations with an employer or

      future employer or even any other type of organization they might be involved with.

⤘   What kind of implications will arise when Google and other companies have access to 

       possibly sensitive information and use it for marketing research, etc.?

 ⤘   Sharing information with a teacher or a classroom will be extremely simple, but what

       happens when the information is compromised in some way? The network is down for a

       few days or does not get backed up.  Are these even realistic issues?

⤘    The role of the library as a fact checker will be greatly expanded.   The nature of school

       assignments could easily change as other students may have the responsibility of cross-

       checking a group project.  

 

Attached are some comparisons I found comparing Zoho and Google documents.


 


 

Friday, November 20, 2009

Methods 1 & 2

Web 2.0 means a new level of service by libraries to a different generation of users. With more rapid access to information, library users will undoubtedly have more complex questions and will want access to some data more quickly. With the widespread use of Facebook and other social networking media, libraries will need to have a presence there in order to reach a larger portion of the population in a way that is much more efficient and cost effective than previously imagined. Libraries will more readily be able to promote their services to their users and especially niche groups of users. Additionally, the library can receive almost instantaneous feedback on its services from a whole different gamut of library users.

Libraries will be challenged to provide fact checking for information contributed to the web and librarians will need to become even savvier at using the web and databases to fact-check information. Libraries will also be challenged to provide training and information to increase computer literacy among certain segments of the population. As more and more of the population are using social networking media in everyday life, consulting the web for finance and travel information (tom mention just a few areas), and conducting business transactions online, the population will be looking to increase their sophistication in using computers and social networking media.

The incredible growth in the use of social networking sites in the last two years means that libraries will need to adapt and get on the band wagon. Users will have a chance to improve their perceptions of libraries as being in the forefront of these new advances.