LIS 9763

Late is better than never, I hope! My responses to the questions laid out last week are as follows:
 

This week’s readings and video highlight that social software can be used as a method of encouraging transparency, approachability, inclusivity, innovation, and participation among both library staff and users. Therefore, as I see it, one of the greatest lessons derived from Web 2.0 is that as librarians and information professionals, we can explore, play with, implement and evaluate these technologies as a means of learning about and fostering exemplary service provision and staff relations both online and off.
 

There are two intertwined elements relevant to marketing, evaluation and social software that stood out to me this week while doing the readings. Firstly, social software offers a wide variety of services we can offer users to meet their needs so long as we are cognizant of this “meeting their needs” goal and market and evaluate our initiatives accordingly. Secondly, social software provides us with an array of marketing and evaluation tools we can use to help us ensure we are indeed meeting this goal in all of the services we offer, virtually and in real life.

If you have not checked it out, I highly recommend joining www.imeem.com. There is tons of great music and other digital media types on there to share and enjoy! 
 
That's all I really have in me for this week. ;)
 
Long live vacations!  :S
 

Last Friday I attended a Webcast entitled: “Can’t Get There from Here: Achieving Organization 2.0.” It was led by Meredith Farkas as part of the ACRL Virtual Conference. One thing that she said was rather obvious--in fact I’ve heard and said it myself many times--but still, it resonated with me.

Of the readings this week, the Farkas blog entry identified what I consider to be the most relevant thing libraries should keep in mind when exploring the possibilities offered to them by social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook. While Mack, et. al.

I won't be posting this week. Enjoy folksonomies.

Generally speaking, I am one to agree with Porter, who notes that social bookmarking and tagging is most useful as a means of organizing one’s own digital content on their terms; as he says, “personal value precedes network value.” However, I do not view bookmarking and tagging as some sort of keyword-revolution that trumps the powers of more “top-down,” static means of structuring the organization of information.

When built around a responsible and committed group of people with a shared purpose, wikis can provide a well-structured, easy-to-use, effective and efficient means of organizing and providing access to prolific amounts of information to a wide array of people.

Even the simplest task (or in this case, syndication) can become problematic if done carelessly. When it comes to the use of RSS feeds by libraries and users alike, this certainly appears to be the case at times. In what follows, I have written out some of the reasons RSS feeds are great-- and not-so-great-- based on my own limited experiences with them as well as what I have taken from this week's readings and case studies.