Office 2.0: Google Docs

I began using googledocs about two months ago through the work I have been doing with CODEP. Several members post documents to allow easy viewing and editing which is particularly useful as we all live in different parts of the country and are often working on things at different times. It is also really useful if you forget your memory stick and need to save your work when working on a shared computer. I think it has a very friendly interface and as it is similar to Word it is nice and easy to use.

Wikipedia

The very fact that there is a WISER session entitled 'Beyond Wikipedia: Reliable Reference Sources' run by librarians, for staff and students at Oxford highlights the prominence of Wikipedia, in academic research. I use it all the time, to ‘check’ pieces of information and to research and I have friends who contribute or translate pages regularly. The editing feature once again makes the sharing views and information really easy and readily accessible and yet it also challenges my understanding of what an author is, who owns a piece of writing and who is responsible for regulating it. No doubt I will go on using Wikipedia for both serious study and fun research, knowing that it has its limitations but also that it is a great source of information.

Wikis

I was introduced to Wikis during my time at the RSL. Many of those who work in reader services use the Re@lSpace wiki. For 23 Things I also decided to join the Web 2.0 Working Party wiki. I found it really easy to use and like google docs, the fact that everyone who has registered, can edit and comment on posts it makes sharing information reallu easy. I found the editing toolbar fairly straightforward to use and had a good look at all of the libraries currently using Web 2.0. The list can be found at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/libraries/libraries/web2.

More tweeting...

I have been following several tweets on Twitter but I still don't really think I am appreciating it! I'm not someone who talks the talk and I don't really feel I have an awful lot of info to share with a world of stangers.
For libraries, Twitter provides another opportunity for for reader interaction but I once again I wonder whether readers really want librarians invading their social spaces.

tweet, tweet, tweet

Over the last week I have been I have been exploring the world of Twitter. Before I embarked on my exploration, the only experience I had of Twitter was through celebrity magazines who have started reporting celebrity ‘tweets’ which they think will be of interest. I was keen to explore twitter but did have some reservations, the main one being that, at heart, I am a verbose humanities students who dislikes text who usually uses far more words than I need! So I was a little horrified when I read that the definition of a tweet was ‘a single update of no more than 140 characters’.

This morning I have added friends who use Twitter to my long list of news and book tweets I decided to follow. I think tweeting works well in an environment which is very fast paced and for organisations who need to share just a little information with a lot of people. It does though only further fuel our appetite for immediate information and the desire to have what we want instantaneously.

The process of adding friends wasn’t too hard although I couldn’t search any of my existing accounts as I’ve only very recently got a Yahoo and gmail account and I only use them for the 23Things so don’t have a list of contacts on them. It was very helpful being able to search for all the 23Things tweet by putting ‘#ox23’ in the search box.

LinkedIn

I was very keen to sign up for LinkedIn because one of my concerns about sites such as Facebook is that they are social networking sites. I hadn’t heard of LinkedIn so was keen to have an explore and see what it could offer. I was however quite disappointed. I found it fairly difficult to use and it was particularly intuitive. So I definitely agree with having professional networking sites but I’m not sure that LinkedIn is one I’ll be using in future.

The world of social networking

As my previous posts have suggested, I am really interested Web 2.0 but am a little hesitant on the how and why of the resources out there. Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive about using Facebook, something which I had used exclusively to say in touch with friends, as a library communication tool. Libraries, businesses, universities, charities are all populating Facebook pages in order to drum up support and publicise their causes. I think the first question to ask is whether readers want libraries to communicate with them via Facebook. My initial thoughts are no, but having looked at Queen’s College Library site, which boasts 2,000 fans, perhaps I am mistaken. So I have been converted into thinking Facebook pages for smaller libraries are a good idea but I can’t imagine this kind of page working for larger libraries.

Communicating on Facebook does not bring anything especially novel to the way libraries are interacting with their readers- we already have websites etc which are our main ways of conveying information- but it is an additional way of reaching of them. Looking round the library now I see a lot of Facebook pages on the screens but I don’t think any of them are checking library opening times or accessing reading lists…