Well, I'm tossing around ideas about how I'll use what I've learned from Project Play at our own library. I have to say that Project Play has made me much more aware of what's going on in the world of web 2.0. And that's a start, right? I can't use stuff I'm not even aware of. Lots of possibilities - fresh content for our website and a whole new way to communicate with patrons for starters. The only thing I didn't like was that I did have to break my own rule and do a lot of the work at home to keep up. I justify it by telling myself that I AM enjoying the project. I am such a geek...
Wiki What? I had fun playing around in the sandbox but I've got to say, I had a hard time thinking of a way our library might use a wiki. The only thing I can come up with for now is a staff page. It would be nice to have a wiki that we could all add our favorite resource links to - a handy starting off page with no web editing skills required.
Initially I liked the community wiki for Davis, California but then I stumbled on to a page about some of the problems they've had with abusive edits and it was kind of a downer.
Maybe I was less than thrilled because I already have some web editing experience? Maybe I have control issues? I don't know, maybe I just missed something.
I checked wikipedia and found our community and our library represented. Good to know.
del.icio.us tames the library site monster A few weeks ago I was talking to Beth about our new website and the direction we want to go with it. I told her that while we like to add links introduce new/cool/informative sites to our patrons, we don't necessarily want those links to linger forever. Link, link, link and soon you have a monster of a directory where you can't find anything in a reasonable amount of time. I mentioned that we'd rather have a "link of the week" segment on the site.(of course with a much cooler name that we have yet to think up - maybe YOU have a suggestion? Seriously, help us out!)Beth suggested a del.icio.us account for the library. Genius! I set up accounts on the staff computers and now we can tag away to our hearts content. We'll be able to set up a feed from the del.icio.us accout that will update every time we place a new tag. Fresh content for very little work. Thanks Beth!
I also set up a personal account. Let's see if del.icio.us can tackle my genealogy bookmarking snarl. I have a history of finding great info on obscure sites, bookmarking it and entirely forgetting what I thought was great about it when I revisit months later. ARGH! The del.icio.us notes feature should jog my memory.
Care to see what's going in my del.icio.us account and my brain so far? Go ahead, lots of boring genealogy - no XXX sites.
I tried out LibraryThing. What a fun new toy. I don't know if I will continue with it because I just started using goodreads a few weeks ago and am more familiar with it. I'll play with LibraryThing a little more and see which one has the most features I'll use. I do like being able to export my LibraryThing to my blog. Is that enough to get me to switch? I don't know. I have my "reading history" turned on in InfoSoup. I would love to be able to import that to either one. Can that be done?
Also tried the suggester - special sauce? I've only cataloged only 5 books so the suggester says my "results may be spotty." The suggester says I should try Wolf Dreams by Yasmina Khadra. I'll give it a try but I am slightly afraid that if I read any more books about Islamic fundamentalism, the only people reading my blog will be the F B I. 8)
My flickr account is up and running. Too bad it only has one photo so far. Guess I'd better get busy snapping some pics. This picture was taken with a game camera. We get some really great shots with it and I think my husband would get a big kick out of using flickr to share them. You know boys with toys...
I'm not sure yet how I would use flickr for the library. Maybe if you had some big project going on? I like the 365 library pics idea but I don't know if we would be able to keep up with it.
Feedback thingies Well, I made my first survey on Survey Monkey and I am hooked. I'm trying to catch up so I skipped the tutorial and just winged it. I "borrowed" some questions from a survey I found online (Let's just say my survey may sound very familiar to some APL staff) and just added a few more questions of my own. I had no problems - it was very straight forward. Think I'll post the survey on our website and see if I can get a few bites.
Time to get serious about Project Play. Yikes, this is week 9 and I am on week 3.
I gave Bloglines a try. I was "aware" of RSS feeds, but thought they would just eat up more of my time online. Now I can see how useful they can be - let them do the hunting and gathering for me. Yeah, project play!
