Hello From CO: Let the Games Begin

Hello my fellow classmates! You guys are doing some kick-butt work! It's great to read y'all posts and ideas. Thank you.

Wow, I am just now catching up on all my Bloglines, email, notes etc. In fact, I am sitting in the swanky lobby of the Broadmoor utilizing the free wifi to make this post. Today started out with a great welcome from the SIRSI clan. Updates on the company were followed by the latest on new products and services. After this, I ducked into several mini presentations including: The Google Experience, One Stop Shopping: EPS Rooms & Usability, and rounded it off with How to Use MARC Format, Unicorn, and Web2 to Create Your Own Law Database. Let me say, lots and lots of good stuff. It is very interesting to see how other library systems are paying attention to the End-User like never before by seeking ILS systems that function with the ease of Google coupled with great graphics and all the best of the library system content. Libraries NEED ILS systems that meet the demands of all that Library 2.0 touts and frankly, much of what has been designed just doesn't hold a candle. I agree with the SIRSI focus on the User Experience, but as a user of their product, it's not 2.0..it's not even 1.5 and that is the great debate. However, I do know from their presentation today, they are indeed working on products to make this happen. But what to do in the meantime as we struggle with clunky products? I see alternatives like the great Georgia PINES system, built by librarians and run by librarians who made it swift, fun, flashy and definitely in line with 2.0 styles. Perhaps a great alternative, but what to do for smaller systems without such support?

For more on this touchy topic read the great blog post by Tech Essence (Also mentioned in Meredith's great blog :)

In the meantime, I've got a full schedule tomorrow, but in my RSS assignments and in presentations yesterday with Helene Blowers and Gary Price I heard about a great little site called Twitter.

Check it out :) You can get an RSS feed on your own posts or friends etc. The whole nifty premise? What are you doing right now? How fun is that!

Okay, back to RSS assignments. BTW: I must say, RSS makes my job soooooo much easier by feeding me all the gouge without me doing a thing. Same with De.licio.us. I LOVE it. I tag and use my bundles everywhere. The folksonomies created are often times better searched for info than a search engine like Google. In addition, I think it would be great to make a link on our OPAC records to a social software tagging site to see how other people classified a book. Some think such tagging means we won't need catalogers. But that's like saying because you slept at a Holiday Inn last night, you are now able to do open heart surgery! We NEED catalogers now more than ever too keep the taxonomy base that is essential to truly relevant search. Folksonomies can expound on that, but never replace. Just my two cents :)

More later...