Scary? Exciting? All of the above?

Wikis, I think, are mostly scary to me because I grew up during the age of Wikipedia. I remember all throughout high school people using wikipedia as a resource and I would cringe. Only one of my teachers - my favorite english teacher - mentioned that it wasn't a good thing to use because people could change it at will and it wasn't monitored all that strictly for content (so obviously, it could be inaccurate).

Then, I went to college. Being the overly academic perfectionist that I am, it was horrifying that during each of my four years, I saw someone who had written a formal research paper and cited Wikipedia. I weeped to myself at night.

For less serious things like events, maybe, I think a wiki is cool. Or having a wiki for a conference. I believe there was one for MLA last year... but for the love of all that is good and right in the world, not for a serious reference source. And if you use it as one, at least double check your information somewhere else :-/

It would be kind of nice if the library had a wiki for our programs, so people could sort of chat (possibly banter) about programs, give ideas, etc about past, present, future programs since that's such a big part of what we do here. And by programs, I mean classes and seminars and such. Haha. We could sort of facilitate it, make sure nothing crazy was going it, but for the most part let customers run the show. I think that would be a neat way of hearing what people have to say.

To infinity and beyond!

This whole library 2.0 thing is pretty exciting... the idea of libraries actually using technology to their advantage and reaching out to customers through the web is what I'm all about. Instant messaging, social networking, all different types of websites. This stuff is fun and it's what libraries are turning in to. There's no more room for being afraid of technology. This is what our customers want. They're applying for jobs online, talking to their friends online, getting directions to their next destination online, booking their travel and storing their information... all online.

I'm excited for what I hope will be the new training opportunities that are going to foster this change. I'm hoping to attend a bunch of fun new trainings on little ways we can start transitioning our library more and more to a culture that reaches out to its customers through the web. It will take a while to catch on, but I think once it does, our customers will happily respond and it will catch on like wildfire.

Viagra? Orkut?

I'm slightly disturbed that one of the top searches on Technorati is viagra, but... we'll ignore that one.

BUT... I found something interesting. One of the other top searches was Orkut. I had no idea what this was, so I clicked, and found out that it's Google's social networking side. Who knew? I'm a huge fan of Google and I hadn't even heard of this. Um, maybe I need to frequent Technorati more often... Apparently I'm out of the loop, here.

So here I am, tempted to sign up for Orkut, when I'm already a member of way too many other social networking sites, just because I'm terribly curious as to what Google has come up with. Google always does cool stuff.

To register, or not to register?

Yum

I like Del.icio.us a lot, actually. I've had an account with them for a while now, and I use it occasionally when I find really good links to things that I don't want to forget. It's nice to have bookmarks in your browser, but especially for someone like me who goes from computer to computer; work, to home, to my second home, and all over the place -- it's great to have a place online to store all my "stuff."

This could be particularly useful for librarians because we could keep a store of research-type links, reference links, reader's advisory links, any of the above. We all know that sometimes our toolbar bookmarks and regular bookmarks either get moved around or sometimes disappear :-x But it would be quite cool, especially with the call center upon us, to have a collaborative spot like Del.icio.us to store all of our resources so everyone can access them. Fancy.

rollyo?

I guess it's cool. I probably wouldn't use it. I made one - http://rollyo.com/rjhinson/shopping/ - it's the sites I usually go to when I'm online window shopping (haha), and it was kind of neat to be able to search them all at once for a particular thing, I admit, but that's not typically how I use those sites.

I'm sure it would be cooler if I thought of a better set of sites to use it for. I'm kind of interneted-out at this point. Too much... must get away. Need vacation... ::zombie face::

Library Thing!

I started my Library Thing years ago in college and I never kept up with it, so it's terribly out of date, but I still love it. When I get around to it, I'd love to update it so I have an accurate list of all the books I own (... hm... that sounds intimidating)

My Meez!