Reflection

Image by jsmoral on Flickr

So this is Thing 13, and that means I'm just over the half way point of the programme! What have I thought so far, and what have I learnt?

Without a doubt the programme has increased my confidence in using new technologies and exploring what is out there. I'd heard about a lot of web 2.0 tools, but never had the time or inclination to explore them for myself. By reading an introductory outline on what a tool is all about, and being given step-by-step instructions for signing up and getting started, I've had a great push in the right direction from the Cam23 team that has given me the confidence to give new things a try. It's also been extremely helpful to read articles, views and opinions on the various Things (tagging was especially thought-provoking), and to see real-life examples of how libraries are putting the tools into practice: great inspiration and food for thought!

I have been thinking about the usefulness of each of the Things in a personal and a professional capacity. Many of the tools already are, or have the potential to become, extremely useful for my own daily activities or as an aid to my general career development (e.g. keeping up-to-date with developments and news in the library and information sector)-Google Calendar, Doodle, Delicious, and RSS all spring to mind, and I would certainly recommend these to others.

In a professional, work environment the tools seem to divide between being internally useful among colleagues (e.g. Doodle, Google Calendar), and as new ways to reach out to users and promote services and resources. In terms of the latter, the time input required and the potential outreach of the tool would have to be carefully considered. For example, I don't think Twitter would be particularly useful for a College library, firstly because I don't get the impression that many young people/students are on Twitter, and secondly there would not be a huge amount of information to communicate in the Twitter format (which is particularly geared to speedy updates and news items). Emails, posters and the library website would cover the ground pretty well. Learning about Creative Commons on Flickr has been extremely useful, and I now have great hopes that my posters can become stunning works of art that will be much more eye-catching! Slideshare and Delicious are both great potentials, the former in particular for library induction information. I really like the fact that the two can be integrated into the library website. I don't think there's much point having information spread out all over the place because students just wouldn't have the time to go round looking at them all. But bringing things together on the library website would make them much more accessible.

I am very excited about web 2.0, and I think there is a lot of possibilities for libraries to take advantage of the free tools that are available to reach out and connect with users. Web 2.0 is certainly very trendy, but I think a lot of thought has to go into which things are most useful for an individual library and the community it serves. Because I had only used web 2.0 technologies in a personal social environment before, I now feel more confident to suggest them in a work setting.

As for blogging, I'm feeling more comfortable about writing something that is publicly viewable on the web. I wouldn't say I'm a pro, and I'm not sure that I'll continue blogging once the programme comes to an end. But I am finding the process of writing each post extremely productive-it forces me to evaluate the tool and to really think about it. The process of expressing my thoughts helps them to gain some clarity and leads me to form opinions that I hope others will find of some interest.

I'm looking forward to exploring the next 10 Things and considering their potential utility both for myself and the library world.

Delicious

I really like the look of Delicious. I have recently spent a lot of time organising and adding to my Favourites in my browser, and my list of favourite sites keeps growing quite dramatically. I have been concerned that should anything happen to my laptop, all of these would be lost and I'd have to start again from scratch (a rather daunting prospect). So the idea that my favourite sites could be accessed from anywhere is extremely appealing. I also like the fact that a website can be tagged with multiple subjects (I often have an internal debate about which folder to best save a site into under my Favourites!) I think it is also useful that you can see how many others have saved a site-by clicking on the numer of people you seem to be able to view a list of users who also saved that site, and then by looking at their pages you may be able to discover other related sites that could be of interest to you?

In terms of using Delicious from a library point of view, I think that it could be extremely useful for a Faculty library because a particular subject can be focused on. In a College library I am rather less sure what sites it would be useful to collect for students, perhaps general online tools and resources? It's great to hear that tag and link roll features could be added to a library webpage, making Delicious material easily accessible to users. I particularly like what Nashville Public Library have done with Delicious on their library website-creating a Delicious tag cloud of different topics that teenagers may like to find information on. This not only looks great, but is extremely accessible.

I will definitely be signing up to Delicious (yet another account to create, groan-but it seems just too good a tool to pass by)!

Tagging

I found Clay Shirky's essay very thought-provoking, particularly the idea that due to the absence of physical constraints in the digital world, classification of material on the web is freed from the types of organisational schemes we use in libraries. However, while a book's classification is limited to one subject and specific area due to the need to give a book one individual classmark, subject headings provide access points to books that recognise the various topics that are covered within. Yes, the vocabulary used in these subject headings are highly controlled, but it is this use of an authoritative vocabulary that facilitates a uniform standard. This has the affect of aiding access to and retrieval of material that is relevant to a users area of interest. Nevertheless, difficulties may arise where a user expresses a search term in vocabulary that is different to that used in a subject heading.

User tagging of digital content provides a much greater flexibility in the choice of vocabulary to classify material. It can therefore be much more personal and subjective. I largely agree with Shirky that the variety that is produced by this flexibility should not be seen as chaos, and that the different vocabularies used by people do indeed have subtle differences in meaning, such as the movies and cinema example. It allows for different view points and ideas to be represented and undoubtedly allows for a democratization of content by allowing users to specify what is of value to them. So long as tags aid retrieval, they are definitiely useful. It seems that more popular and frequntly used tags gain more importance, and as such a form of hierarchy is formed-I suppose this is good generally, but perhaps is not necessarily so in every case as it places greater value on more common terms/ideas?

I must admit I am not entirely sure about what to make of tagging. Overall I think it's good, and don't have much of a problem with it, but in the course of writing this blog I seem to have become rather more uncertain, and I apologise for the probable incoherent nature of this post! I'm not sure what to think of incorporating tags into library OPACs, maybe that would be useful? It's definitely a topic I will give more thought to, right now I need a break!