LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

I had a very busy Saturday packed with Web 2.0 stuff!  I borrowed Guitar Hero I and II and let the anime club have at it after their meeting.  Gaming in the library!  As far as I know, it's a first in the library.  After they started getting bored, I asked them if I should request the game system for another day.  Most of them said yes and I asked if I could post some follow up information on the blog.  Surprise, surprise, hardly anyone actually had steady access to the Internet.  Well that explains why nothing happens on the blog.  So Web 2.0 doesn't

Google Custom Search has been one of the most useful Web 2.0 tools in my work as an academic liaison. Google Custom Search allows you to collect a group of websites together that you want searched and create a search engine that will only search those sites. It's basically like a federated search engine for the web, allowing you to search multiple sites at once. You can choose as many or as few sites as you'd like to search.

This post is a little off-topic, having nothing to do with social libraries, but it does have to do with library career choices.  I was hoping for a little advice from some of you who have worked in libraries for longer than I have as I have a job opportunity in front of me that I'm not sure what to do about.

Most catalogs can be clunky and awkward to use on the front end and back end.  This article, which our digital librarian passed on, has some neat thoughts on libraries that are making their own catalogs and doing it open source

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/19/opensource

This week I wanted to comment on a recent experience I had in my library, and possibly get feedback. 

This quote from Mr. Ridley, chief librarian at the University of Guelph, got me thinking about how libraries need to address the changing needs of their physical space in order to support the shift to interactive online services:

This week's activity will give you experience using social networking software, developing a profile and exploring other user's profiles. There are two options: one for those who do not already use Facebook and one for those who do use Facebook. If you already use MySpace and Facebook, please do the MySpace activity.

The goal of this exercise is to get you familiar with some of the great blogs that are out there for continuing professional development and get you thinking about the different types of blogs and blog posts. Once you're out of school, blogs are a great way to keep up with current trends in libraries and technology. There are literally tens of thousands of blogs that would be useful to librarians interested in technology, but obviously, no one has time to read that many.