Musings on week 4: fun but maybe not a priority

Here it is almost midnight and I have to be up in a few hours, but I've been wandering around flickr and Facebook. My, what addictive new time-sinks I've discovered! They're enormously fun, but I don't see the immediate and direct practical applications for libraries that I saw with some of the other technologies we've explored. They strike me as a little clumsy. Some library applications have been interesting and innovative, such as training photos or tours in flickr, but frankly I think there are more elegant ways of doing those things on "traditional" webpages. And I think our students are more likely to find those things on our webpage than in flickr. I can see where the motivation to post those things in a more public social space might be greater for a public library.

On the other hand, I come up with endless possibilities for using these technologies in my personal life. What a great way to share photos from school events with other parents; what a great way to showcase our historic neighborhood for our neighborhood association; what possibilities for the city Big Read project I'm volunteering for, etc. Maybe it makes more sense to me to use these spaces for these areas of my life, because these areas of my life don't have server space, web managers or system administrators already, whereas my library does.

Experimenting with flickr, social networking sites, Second Life, etc., seems like it would be great fun...if I had nothing else to do, but, alas, I do. Always, it seems. And now, off to bed before I start wandering through virtual landscapes again.