LIS 757

This week I was a little surprised to find out how many online applications I’ve been using and taking for granted for years. It’s become second nature for me to switch seamlessly between local and remote applications without skipping a beat.

I use YouTube to find videos that demonstrate crafting techniques, and to watch documentaries and such that I otherwise couldn’t see. I don’t really go on there looking for entertainment, though I know a lot of people do. But I will watch videos that people send me. I haven’t used the site to publish content, but that’s mostly because I don’t have much of anything to say that would outweigh my shyness. Still, I greatly appreciated Robin Good’s take on how to use the site effectively. I can see all of that information transferring well for libraries trying to promote their videos on YouTube.

I’ve been using Gmail and the other Google Apps since the beginning. Some friends of mine were invited to try Gmail (when it was still invitation-only) and so I was invited shortly after. It seemed much cleaner and more useful than my other email accounts, so I switched over completely in short order. When the Calendar and Documents features were added I jumped on board because I was so impressed with Mail. It also helped that my computer at the time kept dying, and it was very handy to have copies of all my assignments and notes accessible from any other computer when that happened. In fact, I actually started out using Writely in 2005, and just switched my documents over to Google when they were bought out.

Andrea Mercado’s discussion of the possible policy decisions that may come into play when creating a Flickr account for the library was a real eye-opener. Some of the stuff she talked about I’d already considered, but other things were new for me. I’m a little amazed sometimes at how many little details need to be considered before the library can go ahead with any new initiative. Flickr is also something I started using as soon as I found out about it, if only as free photo storage. Because I’ve never been one to use the social aspects of the site, I have since moved on to hosting the photos on my website, since I have plenty of space to do so. I really enjoy finding other’s photos and commenting though.

Like most other social networking sites, these applications work best if you can use them to improve a service you would already provide to your users. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people complaining that libraries don’t include word processing software for them to use, and yet no one is educating them about the fact that there are plenty of web-based ones that the library provides access to.

I don’t have much to say about the case studies this week. Just that I was surprised at the variety of content they all were providing. I think it’s great.