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. 🙂
Robin Grant wonders what will happen to her stuff if del.icio.us goes out of business.
In my humble opinion, this is one of the many reasons to use a service like onlywire.com, which allows one to post to del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, blisklist, etc, etc, etc with one bookmarklet. You can continue to use the service of your choice, but if one of them drops out of site, the other has the data ready for use or export.
Meredith,
I’m avidly following the 5 Weeks course even if I am behind (still working on week 1 information) but I’m so excited by it! The course and the ideas generated by your participants is helping get my own library fired up about the implementation of social software. Thanks to you and all the collaborators for putting this course together.
Hey Rick! That is a very good idea, especially since then you don’t need to remember to back up your bookmarks from del.icio.us or any other single service. 🙂
Meredith:
I’ve been following the “Five Weeks” courses in fits and starts as I’m in the last semester of library school with 11 other credit hours…though I have to say it’s usually hard to tear myself away from playing with del.ici.ous to pontificate about information transfer. And if it’s about such high-level concept, it usually ends up as pontificating…I’ve yet to figure out how to tone it down. 😉
Anyway, what I’m laboring to say is, you and Michelle (whose blogs I check regularly), Karen Coombs, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Ellyssa Kroski, Dorothea Salo, and all of the fantastic presenters are really “being the change you want to see,” and it’s truly inspiring. A sappy-sounding sentiment, maybe, but it’s the truth.
Keep up the good work ladies, and I hope to run into all of you when I actually (fingers crossed) get a job in the profession!