You Tube

We all knew something new was up when politicians began appearing on You Tube, when they didn't expect to have been recorded. The distance we have come in just a hundred and fifty years, since people barely knew what their presidential candidates looked like let alone what they sounded like when they sang or growled. You Tube is an amazing tool. The other night my family watched a live broadcast of a reality show with a talent theme. There was a performance on the show that we were impressed by so my daughter searched it on You Tube and it was already there and we watched it again. This was 5 minutes later. You Tube and other sites like it will revolutionize political campaigns as well as entertainment.

Online Productivity

The free web based word processing programs including google docs and zoho writer are great tools. Not everyone wants to have Word for word processing and this is a great free alternative. It's got an almost infinite amount of storage space for documents so you can save all your documents online and access them whenever you want, from any internet computer.

Wikis, Netlibrary and Audiobooks

Having worked with Wikis for some months now I can safely say that they are one of the most useful tools that we use these days. Although blogs have their uses, wikis are so much more flexible and useful for our purposes. Netlibrary books and the audiobooks are a wonderful option. I have been downloading audio books from netlibrary since we got the database and it's a great thing. I hope to see us add downloadable movies before too long.

The Future of Libraries

This was an interesting compilation of articles. Rick Anderson's "Away from the Icebergs" article is somewhat simplistic and misses the "boat". The kind of library he is warning us against certainly doesn't exist here, nor do I imagine it exists anywhere. One of our biggest charges is to help people navigate the waterways of the new technologies. He would have us not teach, but just try to find simple technologies for them, that they can manage themselves. John Riemer's article "to better bibliographic services" is abolutely indecipherable. The article by Wendy Schultz on the other hand is excellent. She makes a great point when she says that "libraries are not merely in communities they are communities." Her descriptions of the evolution of community libraries shows how the library and the community and the technology sway to the same imperative, time marching onward. She also says of libraries that "they preserve and promote community memories." They hold the history of the community they are a part of. As for the future of libraries she says, "the library (of the future) is everywhere, barrier free and participatory." Our place in this future is that of a travel guide. Shepherding patrons through the changes. As an example she says, "tagclouds offer diverse connections not focused expertise."

Library News on a Podcast

I was impressed with Libvibe. If you listen to the podcasts you hear some pretty interesting stuff about libraries. They don't pull any punches. Check it out.
LibVibe

Technorati - has some application

Technorati is useful to hunt for blogs. The favorites on Technorati is interesting.

Rollyo Reference Library Search

Select...Reference Lib SearchSearch The Web

This Rollyo could be a useful tool.

Librarything

Librarything is great, I wish I had the time to really use it.

Feeding the news habit

I have an rss feed on my iGoogle page now. That's the new name for a personalized Google page, and it is the handiest thing yet on the internet.