LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Fall 2010)

1. How has your view of social software changed since starting the course?

I would say that I have a larger perspective of all the various forms and uses available than I did before the class began.

2. What technology did you find most interesting for your personal use? What technology did you think would be most useful professionally?

4. What do you think are some of the things that typically cause libraries to fail in implementing social software?

I am curious about the general efficacy of academic/institutional tagging, so I thought I'd try the same keyword with all four examples provided and see what the differences were.

With MTagger, I used "feminism." I got 7 related tags (ecofeminism, post-feminism, feminism on film, feminism second-wave, Mexican feminism, global feminism, Feminism), and 85 suggested items.

I began by searching for articles related to the notion of social searching, becoming particularly interested in the Google Search Results that show people from your contact lists' related searches. This article was also the most bookmarked of the three; its top 3 tags were "Google," "social," and "search." (The tags I used were "buzz," "socialsearch," and "bigbrother;" it made the most sense to me to conjoin "social" and "search.")

2. What do you think of the idea of using wikis and social bookmarking for library subject guides? Which one would you rather use and why?

In previous weeks, when we've looked at library subject guides, I didn't feel inspired by their general uniformity. It seemed as though many of them contained the same reference guideline advice, even though the subjects varied greatly.

I title the post "VCU Libraries," because the website is connected to both the James Branch Cabell Library
and the Tompkins-McCaw Library. http://www.library.vcu.edu/
The page has an RSS feed, containing feeds for the general library, both libraries, and the Qatar Library
(VCU has a college there). It has a feed for new titles, and feeds for the library's 4 blogs.
The blogs are:
Library Suggestions: http://blog.vcu.edu/libsuggest/

Given my aversion to Manchester United Football Club, I was pleasantly surprised by the city's super-engaging Facebook page. As I looked through all the examples, I more often than not did not feel my interest piqued. And I think that's the whole point with a library's foray into Facebook: it's gotta set off some steam! Many of them looked monotonous, not in terms of color usage, etc; I think it's a fault of Facebook design, it's hard to maneuver outside of the existing structure, its rubric looks the same no matter the diversity of content or author.

I was re-reminded that I tend to react with scepticism whenever I am confronted with newer forms of technology, but it's me responding, it really has nothing to do often with the media themselves. I think I'm one of those people who avoids the bandwagon; but I need to start thinking about what's best for the (hypothetical) library where I (will soon!) work!