Thing 19: The Best of Web 2.0

This is a dangerous list to look at because of the Books category -- I could get caught up in looking at book lists and new sites for hours -- but here's my short list of what I saw:

Biblio.com: http://www.biblio.com/
Their goal is to be the "corner, used bookstore" with a conscience -- with over 50 million books in their inventory, they also strive to give back -- from their website, they state:

"We've grown, but we've proudly maintained our original vision, becoming a local bookstore on a global scale. Every day we enable our customers - nearly a million book lovers from every country on earth - to find high-quality books. We've helped people get books they've spent years trying to find, and in the process, we've helped forge lasting relationships between book lovers and independent booksellers. Our technology bridges geographies to help customers form old-fashioned relationships with small corner bookstores around the world.


Every day, we help small businesses in 36 countries develop and grow their businesses. We provide them with technology and tools that allow them to establish and strengthen their identity. We enable them to connect with their customers, and form new relationships."

Honorable mentions went to LibraryThing and WorldCat -- both already favorites of mine...I talk about LibraryThing below -- it brought me into the social sharing arena like nothing else...ok, Facebook has piqued my interest because of my looming 30 year high school reunion coming up...but I digress.

Ok -- enough for today -- I've enjoyed exploring some new things this summer and revisiting some old friends.

Carol

Week 8: Thing 18 - Zoho Writer

Looking at Zoho Writer this week was interesting. My question as I look at any of these new tools is as always -- what's the applicability in my daily life that will actually be beneficial and save me time or help to include the technology in instruction -- without being the driving force itself -- i.e. "toys for toys sake."

I think there is a future to the online word processing programs such as Zoho and/or Google Docs because of the newer versions of Word that have gone beyond the average user's needs and the complexity of them make general typing/paper writing more convoluted than necessary in many cases. So...in comes an online program that allows you to type from anywhere -- format simply and voila -- you have a paper created -- I'm all for it!

All of the other "bells" that Zoho has -- I'd need to explore more -- I already have email, a wiki and a blog -- at some point, it's a matter of duplication, questioning how many access points I need to have as my portal and seeing "good enough" is just that -- good enough.

Oh -- and yes, I published this to my blog from Zoho -- and it worked fine -- so another plus in its favor!

Carol

All things Wiki: Things 16 & 17

Wikis...I really hadn't created one until I returned to the U.S. in April, although I'd been using Wikipedia for my own quick searches and as an example in my classes related to web evaluation for a few years.

As I looked around at the various wiki sites, I guess my main question is "why??" -- by this I mean -- what are the benefits of them in the context of the place and or purpose. I come back to this question a lot as I look at technology and try new things...is there a tie to instruction, to the curriculum, to learning?? -- or -- is it just fun because...

Not to negate fun because..., but at some point, I begin to feel overwhelmed as to "why" -- and unless I can see a benefit to my life, or my job or to the communities I serve -- then I really just need to backburner some things because of time and energy.

Re: wikis -- I think if we have content that is collaborative and would benefit from collective input, then I'm all for it. The websites that I looked at were using them for a myriad of purposes, from reference, to book information. At Boatwright, we have the MSD and Boatipedia wikis -- MSD seems a good choice for a wiki, since we might have collaborative additions we can benefit from -- Boatipedia, as a wiki, I'm still thinking about -- I see benefits from having comments on the pages and staff input, but we really don't want anyone to be able to go in and change content -- do we?

How could other areas of the library benefit from a wiki? I think as a knowledge base, they are very useful -- such as reference transactions and FAQs for staff -- such as questions asked at the desk, especially since they can quickly be searched. For many cases though, I think that a blog can be used with just as much success since you can post information and comments -- it depends on whether the information is timely as in updates/or more static--reference-oriented in nature I guess...

My 2 cents for the day on Wikis and posts for this week.

Carol