CPL 2.0 Week 10: Twitter

Twitter: In my opinion, the name about says it all... I'm a bit cynical about Twitter. My experience is that if you actually have anything to say, 140 characters is not enough!!! It has been tricky to promote CPL events through Twitter for this reason. With a program to promote, it is extremely tricky sometimes to whittle even the barest relevant details down to 140 characters. Once successful at this task, I often find that there is not enough description to get people interested in attending an event.

As for the other popular users of Twitter, I'm not interested in when certain celebrities are eating ice cream... let alone random strangers keeping the world up-to-date on their minute by minute mundane activities. I'm sure there are others out there who love it, but I'm not convinced.

CPL 2.0 Week 9

Librarything:

I think it's easy to navigate. I enjoyed browsing other people's reading choices and reviews, although I'm not likely to be posting exhaustive lists of what I've read and my reviews. I think it could have applications for library workers, with the caveat that it's like a labyrinth: easy to get sidetracked on a winding path that leads off-topic. It would be hard to use this as an efficient tool, but as a browsing/leisure activity, for those who like to spend their free time reading or online, it seems very well-designed.

CPL 2.0 Week 8: Google Docs

Google Docs: Seems to work OK; I did have an error message withing a few minutes of uploading and editing my file, but refreshing the page seemed to fix it.

I will continue to use traditional word processing programs. The main issues would be the potential of needing to access my document at a time when the Google Docs site is down or having problems; also, issues of security. Although I don't have any "top-secret" documents per se, I would still be concerned if my files could be accessed or changed or deleted by mischief makers. If banks and government websites are vulnerable to hacking (as has happened in the past), Google cannot be totally secure either.

After the Google books settlement, one also wonders how long it would be before Google "owned" the rights to everybody's personal documents and chose what to do with them without prior warning or express permission...

CPL 2.0 Week 7

Flickr & YouTube:

Great sites for users and browsers if you want to:

- share photos or videos online
- make your content available publicly
- look for other amateur-created content
- find old footage from various sources

Everybody's a star.

CPL 2.0 Week 6

RSS feeds: I was successful in setting one up.

I can see how this would be very handy for people doing ongoing research into a particular topic or needing prompt updates about a particular news story. On the other hand, I'm more of a browser when it comes to online news, and I do research on a case-by-case basis, so I'm not sure how much I will use this. It's also a case of information overload sometimes... I only have so much time to spend online, and I'm not sure how much I'd like to add to that.

CPL 2.0 Week 5

Google News - this product searches for news-story results for a keyword search.

Pros: * very fast
* better than a general search: since it is searching published news stories, this provides better information faster than doing a general Google search on many topics; you eliminate results that aren't already published information
* there is an archive--you can input search terms/places and then limit by timeline; this may be useful for finding "big" local news stories years after the fact when exact dates/details are fuzzy
* provides multiple perspectives quickly on various current news stories without needing access to a subscribed database
* no subscription needed to get a quick overview of published news stories about a topic

Cons: * many, if not most, of the archival results I turned up were "Pay-per-view" access, although the abstract could be viewed for free
* the results lists do not provide enough information to assess the relevance of each result, in contrast to a ProQuest or Ebsco search

Verdict: a good tool to use in lieu of general Google searching if you want to be a bit pickier about the source of information found (i.e. published articles) although not as well organized as subscribed databases. I like that you can use simple keyword searching as a "one-stop" first step to see what published articles are available on a topic, even if you will have to turn to an E-Library database to see full text on some of the older articles.

I would use this again and recommend it to others.

CPL 2.0 Week 4

Facebook... For me, it's still a time-waster. I keep in touch with my friends the "old-fashioned" way: phonecalls, letters, and email! Today I spent 1 hour so far on creating the account and editing privacy settings... Maybe it will grow on me.

CPL 2.0 Week 3

Wikipedia: After looking at about 6 articles, I haven't found any mistakes yet to edit... still looking. Now my count is up to 11 or 12 articles; I finally found a mistake to edit. All I did was add a space after a comma, so I guess that counts as a typo I fixed. I can see how the ease with which people can edit could lead to constant problems in articles on controversial subjects, and I have in the past seen disclaimers and warnings about articles in which the facts were possibly wrong or had been disputed.

From the articles I looked at, it seems there are not many obvious mistakes. With the editing open to anyone, perhaps factual errors and obvious spelling or grammar errors are corrected quickly.

CPL 2.0 week 2

Using Delicious: I am getting more confident finding websites on our Delicious links. I especially like to use the "ebooks" links for online versions of high-demand classic fiction! The links are great when all copies of the book are out.

Tip: Use the "All Tags" link on the right-hand side if you want to browse tags (if you don't have a strong idea of your search term). If you click on a tag that has more than one hit, you will see "Related Tags" open at the top of the column on the right hand side. Very useful!

CPL 2.0 Week 1

I hope to learn enough about Web 2.0 to keep up with the times!