Week two of Five Weeks to a Social Library is now over. RSS and del.icio.us really generated a lot of excitement for our participants and many could see the personal and professional benefits of using these tools. We have people spending 16 hours per week on the class because they want to play with these new technologies. It’s thrilling to see the great ideas and legitimate concerns folks are bringing up regarding these tools. If you’re interested, come join the conversation!

Here are some highlights from this week:

our terrific presenters: In her talk this week on RSS, Michele Mizejewski likened getting content via RSS to getting a magazine via a subscription versus getting a magazine at the newsstand, which we all thought was brilliant! Jason Griffey taught us stuff about del.icio.us that even veterans like me didn’t know. Gabriel Lundeen made tagging easy to understand and quite fun (Gabriel, you should be on the speaking circuit)! Melissa Rethlefsen got folks really excited about syndicating feeds onto their Websites. All of their presentations are linked from the Week 2 page.

connecting at a distance: Sandra Hodgson considers how social software can save time and add richness to our interactions with colleagues at a distance (certainly something we’ve found in this class!). Robin Grant wonders if blogging can help lonely people connect to others online. Jill Markgraf considers how to use some of these tools in the distance learning classroom.

RSS-mania: Rachel Kingcade and Josalyn Gervasio (who must have been hungry while writing her post) get absolutely giddy over RSS. Josalyn gets really into syndicating feeds on a Web page and inspires some of her classmates to play more with technology.

folksonomies versus taxonomies: Tiah Edmunson-Morton and Josalyn Gervasio muse about folksonomies. Tiah asks “why would we encourage a move away from what has become an essential part of libraries and their functionality?” Personally, I don’t think we are moving away, but are moving to incorporate both librarian and user-generated metadata in our systems. It doesn’t have to be an either/or dilemma.

playing with tech is fun!: Shireen Deboo discusses how RSS and del.icio.us have revolutionized how she keeps up with information and “keeps found things found.” Karen Bjork calls Bloglines “my very own mini-conference” (great analogy!).

all about the workplace: Tamara Cameron, Candice Watkins, and Katharina Penner have some great ideas for implementing del.icio.us and RSS in their library settings.

del.icio.us anxiety: Fred Jahns worries about choosing the right tag while Robin Grant wonders what will happen to her stuff if del.icio.us goes out of business.

are del.icio.us results useful?: Missy Van Dusen brings up the idea of del.icio.us group-think, which is not something I’d ever considered before. Jini Errichetti questions whether searching or browsing tags really helps you find results any better than searching Google.

is it worth the effort?: Tamara Cameron considers how to implement social software tools in a setting where staff thinks e-mail is too impersonal. Jini Errichetti asks “who has time to read all this stuff?” and wonders if her staff could grasp stuff like RSS.

Week 3 is all about wikis, a topic near and dear to my heart! If it’s a topic you’re interested in too, join in on the conversations by commenting on our participants’ posts. 🙂