Mashups & API

Mashups
I liked HubMed: there were fewer results of higher relevance (higher precision and lower recall.) I looked at several mashups and finally decided to write about Popurls which combines fifteen consensus filters into one page view. By displaying the top hits on each of the sites it seems to take the pulse of the Web, in its continuous Zeitgeist.

Rollio, Privacy, and Librarians
Privacy has always been of major interest to librarians, and the debate has been stirred by the present politics, the new technology that makes it much easier to have one's privacy invaded, and the differences of opinion about privacy among generations. Even in this search, which was limited to librarian blogs there were 9,640 results, which shows how popular this topic is among librarians.

Podcasting & Video

I also found Odeo difficult to use. It took for ever to load and I'm still trying to login. I found many interesing library podcasts but not very many interesting videos. It's time consuming to produce videos and difficult to avoid the amateurish look. This may change with improved and more user-friendly tools and librarians becoming more familiar with the medium. I'm including a link with Mr. Bean at the library (as an example of how NOT to use a library, of course.)

Online Photo Sharing

This should have taken me very little time, but because of the security restrictions on my laptop it took much longer than I had anticipated. Blogger has added a new slide show feature and I included it in my blog, but it feeds other people's pictures since viewing on mine is restricted. We are increasingly a visual culture and libraries are trying to adapt and reach users using these new visual tools. The applications in this area are astounding especially in science where visualizations and 3D graphic representations make it possible to create powerful images of structures that were hard to imagine before.

Web Office Tools

I can see office tools moving in this direction as work becomes increasingly collaborative, and less time and place-bound. There are possible question marks, however. Web-hosting is dependent on outside companies, which may be here today and gone tomorrow. There is also the question of control, access, and privacy, and much that I like Google, I don't think putting all of one's eggs in Google's basket is a good idea. That's why competitors like AdventNet are welcome.

I had to agree with the Slate review comparing Google Docs with Zoho. Google Docs is a convenient and easy to use tool but there is a size limit for documents, and the spreadsheet is very basic.

Social Bookmarking

I work on several computers and have bookmarks saved on each of them. I can see the use of del.icio.us in helping me to keep track of my bookmarks. Through tag exploration I've already found a few interesting new sites, but I'm curious to find out more about existing academic/scholarly/scientific bookmarking sites as potential tools for research.

Social Networks

As of now I am another face in the Facebook and another link in Linkedin. I can see the potential of Social Networks in general, but I cannot see any immediate applications for libraries. I have to admit that I found the two examples of library presence on Myspace rather disappointing. There were also nice surprises: finding pages of friends I hadn't been in touch with for a long time, and pages of people I know but didn't know too much about. There were some revelations and some surprises ... and "six degrees of separation" in action...

Wikis

The wiki week is long past and I'm still trying to stay in the race and finish by the deadline. Wikis open many possibilities, but they seem to require more thought and organization than blogs. They allow multiple authors to participate in a collaborative process, unlike blogs which fit better the mold of journals or editorials. Our attempt to use a wiki at work was short-lived and after the initial curiosity the project never took off.

RSS & Blogs

Blogs
This is my first attempt at blogging and it has been an enjoyable experience. I am a librarian who wears several hats, one of them being a one-person-library in the orthopaedic department at a major medical center. I maintain a library for thirty residents as well as fellows, attendings and departmental staff, and I can see an immediate application for both RSS feeds and blogs. I usually send out a very informal monthly e-mail which includes library-related issues, articles of interest, research news, and anything that I think may be relevant. I know that most of my residents use gmail, but I don't think they've explored the potential of RSS feeds. I look forward to showing them how they can create feeds from orthopaedics journals, PubMed, and medical Web sites. I'm also excited at the possibility of setting up a library blog for updates.

RSS Feeds
I had used Google Reader before and I already had a few feeds on orthopaedics from Medscape and Medical News Today. I created a new feed for the Web 2.0 course, one from the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and a PubMed feed for an author search. I also have a personal interest in Parkinson's disease, so I have a feed about that from Medical News Today.