Week 6

Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati

Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/
Delicious is a social bookmarking site which allows people to bookmark a web page and add tags to categorize the bookmarks. Links to articles blogs, music, recipes, and more can be placed and accessed from any internet computer.

I opened a delicious account and added a few items and tagged them. This could be a useful tool to share information with a group as well as to access your own bookmarks from any internet computer.

Technorati
http://www.technorati.com/
Technorati is the leading search tool and authority for blogs, the leading monitor of the world of weblogs. It indexes the live web and searches blogs in real time. I was not too excited about this site, perhaps since I prefer to read more factual type material as opposed to primarily opinions.

Perspectives on Web 2.0, Library2.0, and the future of libraries
Yes, libraries are changing, and they are changing fast. The web is a huge part of libraries now, and thus the ideas from Web 2.0 are relevant to us. While integrating new ideas, we must be careful to change in ways that serve the community but not lose the essential qualities that make a library valuable.

Such activities, as mentioned in perspective #3 by Chip Nilges, as tagging and personal cataloging by non-professionals might be interesting, but could water down the accuracy or authority of the information if not presented carefully.

Having easily accessible web portals which integrate data from many sources, such as mentioned in perspective #4 by John J. Riemer, would be helpful for library users. That is definitely a trend that is currently in play. I did try WorldCat, and it appears that YPL is not currently in their database.

In perspective #5, the author, Dr. Wendy Schultz, seems to point to a future which goes through ever changing incarnations, with more and more technology usage, to finally returning to a quiet techno-free old fashioned country house library. Wouldn't it be great if the future could combine the best of both worlds?