My desk at NAR

My desk at NAR
Originally uploaded by davechicago773

Thing 8 is Flckr and photosharing. I helped teach a class on Flickr last summer, but reading through the materials here has been an eye-opener. Not only did I learn about how someone's flckr photo was used in the movie Iron Man, but I also learned about mechanical tags and linking images to blog posts. This is all pretty cool stuff that I haven't really explored that thoroughly.

BTW, I uploaded this photo as part of a class I took at SLA 2008 in Seattle on Web 2.0 apps. We were asked to share an image of our workspace. It looks pretty much the same today as in the photo.

Personally I use Flickr to load photos I want to share with friends or have access to remotely from my computer at home. I don't share everything this way and admit that I forget about it every now and then. I really enjoy browsing other people's photos. One thing I like to do is if I'm planning a trip somewhere I am unfamiliar with, I check to see what photos people have taken to try to get a feel for the place. I also had one of my photos used in an online guidebook to Berlin. For work, I use Flickr mostly to find images for my blog posts.

I joined National Geographic's Intelligent Travel and Librarians' Desks groups. Both have been very interesting.

Technorati

Technorati could be valuable to see what people are saying about our library in blogs - using the URL search to see who is linking to us and what they find important. It's also another way to get feedback on what we do. Seeing how people tag us should help us improve our search function and maybe open new areas that we should explore in more depth.

Technorati could also help us track various topics that we want to keep up to speed on. Using authority and keywords we can find the top blogs in relevant fields to help us keep up to speed on what's going on in, say, foreclosure sales or library automation. Mary Ellen Bates used the example of searching for biofuels in this manner.

I would think to maintain authority you would want to revisit technorati periodically to see if new voices have come along that might either dispute or drive down your picks.

Delicious is just that!

I started using delicious earlier this year when I was asked to teach a class here on social bookmarking and RSS. I'd heard of it before but had never taken the time to explore what it could do. I found I not only really liked the way you can keep your bookmarks with you, but also the opportunity to explore the bookmarks of others who share your interests. I tagged a few blogs that I read frequently via RSS and then explored other users who had also tagged them. Some really interesting discoveries came out of that.

I think the idea of tagging bookmarks makes sense, epecially if your collection grows beyond what one finds in a browser favorites file. It makes searching much easier, though you have to really think how you tag things. You can't call everything 'work' and then expect to immediately locate an article from 6 months ago. You have to really think what an article means to you and how you might search in the future. Of course, by not seeing everything as nested files right in front of you, if you haven't been dilligent about tagging you could misplace something.

I've already covered how I uncovered some new sites, including Esquire's Best Bar list which I found as a popular bookmark one day as I browsed. A link a found via another's tags was Alex Reisner's Road Trip '06 photo blog - really a beautiful site.

The biggest advantages?

• It's portable, allowing you to access sites from wherever you are without having to remember addresses.
• It loads fast so there isn't a wait
• It's popular so there's lots to explore

The biggest weaknesses?

• I'm so used to relying on my favorites and browser-based bookmarks that I forget to use it. I don't know how many times I have racked my brain for a website address when I could have just tagged it in delicious and been done with it.
  
• I'm not all that consistent with my tagging. I don't have too many bookmarks yet, but I worry that my lack of organization will bite me in the ass some day.
  

I do think I can use this at work. We often have to move from computer to computer for work or reference duty. Delicious would solve the issue of different machines. We also plan to continue to teach a class on the topic so the incentive is there to explore further. I just have to remember that it's there!

23 Things

Well, I'm getting a late start on this, but I want to make it before the deadline so here goes. My blog here has sat dormant since my web 2.0 class at SLA 2008 in Seattle. I thought this would be a good time to revive the blog to take advantage of what I've learned so far.

In setting up this blog, we used the suggestions of the instructors in choosing a provider. I have several friends who use blogger had find it quite user friendly. At work we use Typepad for our blogs (including the oh-so creatively named InfoCentral Blog which I help to write). Blogger seems more user-friendly with one row of tools on the bar instead of separate windows to upload images. So far it's been fairly easy going in Blogger. We'll see how it goes.

The Librarian (1946)

Module 2

Wikis aren't as scary as they look. I think we can do a lot of collaboration with them at work. It's a tool we need to explore. I would love to see SLA Illinois do a virtual tour of different area libraries like the DC chapter has done.

Our library already has a Facebook page (and I think a MySpace), but I don't know that it's being used all that effectively. We could do a lot more with the books and reports that we come across to help our memebers for one. I love that you can add twitter to Facebook.

I need to talk with Frederick, the manager of our virtual library, to see how we can speed up getting all this social networking up on our site.