bibli-award

Quick post. I found a really cool thing I'll be looking more in-depth into at http://www.biblio.com/. This business is a perfect example in my mind as to how the web can open new worlds to old businesses, this one specifically the out-of-print book business. It appears to be essentially a networking tool to connect book dealers with potential customers. It functions as a cataloguing and therefor a "reference" tool, and can help you get the book you're looking for that the library no longer has and the bookstore can't get.
That gets my vote.
-Brian

Doc relief

So, I didn't really do the discovery exercise because I've been using Googdocs for a while now. I've actually relied on it for work-related things twice now. Last month, I interviewed for a full-time position for which they asked me to fill out a pre-interveiw questionaire. I copied the word doc that was e-mailed to me into Googdocs, and went to work. I shared it for editing, and corrections were marked right on my file. Then, Hurricane Ike struck. I was able to complete the document in a new location because it was all saved online, and I even submitted it on time for glowing reviews in my interview. It's a really cool tool. I don't really like the way they organize the documents that you save because it's done by time (docs saved today, yesterday, three years ago), but that's okay. It's both a good and a bad thing that they save everything you ever create, but I'm sure there's a delete option somewhere. (I use it as a notepad for things like recipes I find online, etc.) It's a really cool thing.
It scares me sometime the extent to which Google is starting to take over my life
-Brian

wiki 2.0

So, completing the wiki post was easier than I thought. I didn't like the sign up process, but I can't tell you about that now, 'cause I went on a vacation for a week and now don't know what happened anymore! I know I have a dozen or so wiki emails to delete, and I remember seeing something about why that happened, but now it's over with and I'm not thinking about it any more.
I posted two things on the wiki. I don't really do favorites, so I put down the restaurant at which I most recently had a truly outstanding meal, Sage American Bistro on High street near Duncan. It replaced The Kitchen Lounge on High St, which replaced Turkish Cuisine, so a location with a bad history for resaurants. And it wasn't open long before the city destroyed the street in front of it, and has kept the street torn up for months and months now. I really hope they're doing okay.
If you've read this post, then check out this website: <http://www.sageamericanbistro.com/> and go sometime.
See ya,
Brian

wikiwhacked

Wiki's are a brilliant idea. Similar to a chat room but more oganizable. Like having a real discussion with a group of people in different places and different times. Though, the presentations I've seen for them don't lend much credibility to long-term public-use wikis; I think the Wikipedia might be the best (and only ) example of one that's usable over and over by an entire population of people. Any others will simply become obsolete over time, and will be more geared to particular topics and subjects. Of the wiki's I looked at, I liked the Princeton book review one the best. I'm not sure that wikis make a better forum than, say, a simple blog community or a site such as LibraryThing or GoodReads, but whatever. I find myself in favor of mass-edited information on Wikipedia much more than I do the "mob logic" info comment I made about Delicious, though I'm not sure why. I think I simply recognize what Wikipedia is and assume others take it with a grain of salt the way I do, while Delicious is still too new for me to do that.
Hmm, curious thought I just had. I could bookmark my comics on Delicious and not have to search for them on odd computers the way I did today. . .
here goes nothin'
-Brian

2.0 Thoughts

I don't know enough about the history of libraries to say this for sure, but it seems to me that there's something to the idea that public libraries have been 2.0 since their inception. If they haven't been, then they've betrayed the whole concept of a public library.



In this day and age, libraries need to embrace the ideas of 2.0. They need to be open to user input, to social and networking ideas, and to change. The retail and service industries have all turned to a "want it now, get it now" format, and customers are starting to expect that level of service. I envision a time when physical libraries give way to giant databases, where librarians are all but replaced with "search" softwares, and where the public is well enough educated and informed to utilize such a database. While I don't (can't bring myself to) believe that the physical aspect of libraries (buildings, bookshelves full of printed material, live librarians, heavy books with paper pages, etc) will ever be completely usurped, I think that users will more and more want to simply utilize the library through their computer: uploading text, audio and visual material, chatting with librarians for answers and assistance, accessing reference information online. And if that's what the public wants, public libraries shall have to adapt to provide.

Yumyum

Delicious is something that's cropped up in my radar a time or two in the past, but I'd never seen reason to try to figure out the what, why, or how of it before. I appreciate the fact of it, and perhaps some day will have good use for it myself, but as things stand now, I'm just glad to have experienced it. This is sort of a second class research tool in my opinion; it could be a good jumping-off point, but I due to the folkonomic nature of it, I don't know that it would be a strong enough resource to rely upon. (Yes, I realise that you're just using it to get to other sites, but you end up dependant on mob logic rather than true reasoning. (That's my latent reference librarian rearing it's ugly head)). I also see the usefulness of an online bookmark database, but I'd be curious to find out what percentage of the population accesses the internet from public computers as compared to those who only use their own personal machines. Group research projects or "shared interest" groups seem to me to be the most logical application of the program, and anyone who's familiar should immediately see what I mean.
'Til next time,
Brian

Twitter quitter

I'm sorry to post another negative thing, but Twitter really doesn't appeal to me. I have friends who utilize the service, but I'm simply not ready for that level of connectivity. I don't see any use for it unless you're at your computer all day, at which point an IM service is more useful. Perhaps if you're traveling, with a contingency of people following that you're reporting blow-by-blow information back to via phone, but I'm not doing that. Twitter itself didn't do anything to attract me. The site is confusing, I couldn't find any sort of "About" or FAQ's, and it's search feature is hidden. I shall not be doing anything else Twitterwise.
Thanks anyway,
Brian

Personal Book Cataloguer

I've looked at Library Thing in the past, but I don't think I ever actually signed up. I've been using Good Reads some. (I need to go back and actually update my most recent readings, if I can remember them!). I have almost four hundred books catalogued on GoodReads. I like that one better than Library Thing because I don't buy many books. (Almost all of my most recent acquisitions have been pre-readers available to me as an employee of Barnes and Noble Booksellers.) Library Thing has a better layout, but I'm not willing to pay for service. Anyway, this is the accout I just created at Library Thing with my five books attached:
<http://www.librarything.com/catalog/brianwf>.
And this, for anyone interested, is my GoodReads accout:
<http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1237367>.
That's all for now,
-Brian