I don't think that there's a lot to say in response to Thing 7.
I enjoyed looking at the blogs "Iguana" suggested. I added two of them (LIS News and Library Bytes) to my subscriptions.
The Common Craft video really highlighted what seems to be the driving trend in all things technological these days--everyone gets to be the center of their own little universe.
Technology is, by definition, all about convenience.
I guess what interests me is how technology and convenience impact communication. The common factor in online communication seems to the asynchronous convenience.
It started with email. I could write when it was convenient for me. You could respond when it was convenient for you. (Unlike a phone call--which required the simultaneous participation on the part of both participants.)
Now the same is true of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LibraryThing, and GoodReads. But it's also true of blogs and websites. With the added convenience of RSS feeds enabling Readers to bring everything of interest to an individual together for even more convenient reading.
But what's odd is that now everything has to be instantaneous. Everyone is plugged in all the time. Reading and responding in real time. Like the phone call.
And, in fact, everyone seems to have their email forwarded to their phones.
Which kind of defeats the glories of asynchronous convenience.
But that's another topic.....
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Thing 6 - Blog Readers
It seems very odd to be blogging without an image today. Guess all that hard work on Things 3-5 is paying off.
I must confess that I wasn't very excited about setting up a Blog Reader, despite the fact that several of my extended family members have already taken the plunge. And choosing to follow my husband's brother may have been a mistake since it turns out that ALL of his shared items are about math.
Still, it turns out that I love at least one aspect of checking blogs this way. It is much easier to ignore the comments that people post. (See Thing 2 for my cold-hearted assessment of what gets posted in response to blogs.) Without the comments, I can read through the blogs much more quickly and save time. So, I guess I'm a convert on that front.
How could libraries use Blog Readers effectively? Well, it seems like a convenient way to keep up with the various media outlets in a community. (Assuming that your community is large and online enough to be Internet savvy--which mine is.)
For example, one of the Blogs I subscribed to is for the DMN blog on my City of employ. It posts a daily news roundup, so I can quickly get a sense of what's happening around town. Since many people seem to call the library with questions about events in and around the city (whether library-related or not) I feel like more of a professional if I at least know what they're talking about. And it's nice to have an outside-the-city-government-itself view of what's happening around town. (Around here, city employees receive most city press releases via email.)
On the lighter side, I'm looking forward to keeping up with "Unshelved" again. I'd let that slide for awhile. But we all need a quick laugh to get going in the morning!
I must confess that I wasn't very excited about setting up a Blog Reader, despite the fact that several of my extended family members have already taken the plunge. And choosing to follow my husband's brother may have been a mistake since it turns out that ALL of his shared items are about math.
Still, it turns out that I love at least one aspect of checking blogs this way. It is much easier to ignore the comments that people post. (See Thing 2 for my cold-hearted assessment of what gets posted in response to blogs.) Without the comments, I can read through the blogs much more quickly and save time. So, I guess I'm a convert on that front.
How could libraries use Blog Readers effectively? Well, it seems like a convenient way to keep up with the various media outlets in a community. (Assuming that your community is large and online enough to be Internet savvy--which mine is.)
For example, one of the Blogs I subscribed to is for the DMN blog on my City of employ. It posts a daily news roundup, so I can quickly get a sense of what's happening around town. Since many people seem to call the library with questions about events in and around the city (whether library-related or not) I feel like more of a professional if I at least know what they're talking about. And it's nice to have an outside-the-city-government-itself view of what's happening around town. (Around here, city employees receive most city press releases via email.)
On the lighter side, I'm looking forward to keeping up with "Unshelved" again. I'd let that slide for awhile. But we all need a quick laugh to get going in the morning!
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