New word - Crowdsourcing

I just came across a new word that is perfect for Web 2.0. It is crowdsourcing. It connotes open innovation, the wisdom of crowds, collective intelligence, and peer production. I'll have to use in my meeting tomorrow.

Digg it! - Thing 15

My first thought going into this site is that it was going to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Yes, there was evidence of that with top stories such as "Top Products for Smuggling Alcohol into Venues." There was a lot of stuff like that, but there was so much more. It would be a good place to go to keep up on technology and business news. I think the links I have on my Google Reader probably do just as good a job as keeping me up on library news so I'm not sure I'd use it for that.

For someone into pop culture this would be a great place to hang out and get lost for hours in. The "Odd News" section is entertaining to look at. I also added their comics page to my Delicious file. Fun, but not sure how much I'd use it for work. I'm afraid I'd get side-tracked too easily.

Magically Delicious! - Thing 14 (Delicious)

This is a neat tool. I'd heard a lot about Delicious, but never explored it before. I've often found myself wishing that there was a better way to organize my bookmarks and here it is! My old outdated software and computer wouldn't allow me to import my bookmarks, but it gave me an opportunity to clean out my bookmarks. A number of the links no longer work. I also found a number of links that I want to add to my Google Reader list. Click here to link to my Delicious account.

There are several links that I am not going to make public and that is our contracted vendors. I don't think I should have that for everyone out there to see. If someone wants that information they can call me or contact the City's Purchasing Department, but I don't think I should put it out there for everyone to see.

Tag! Your it! - Thing 13 (Tagging)

Yeah! I am halfway through the North Texas 23.

After reading this section on Tagging, I went back and inserted tags for all my blog posts, something I was remiss in doing when I wrote them. Tagging for me has been more of an afterthought.

It's interesting though. I've been reading BLOG BLAZERS: 40 TOP BLOGGERS SHARE THEIR SECRETS and, so far, not one of them has mentioned tagging as being important to blogging. They all emphazise the headline which indicates to me that they are thinking in terms of keyword searching rather than tagging. They are also thinking in terms of grabbing someone's attention. I think people are so used to keywords from searching on the internet.

I am not a cataloger so I don't have any emotional attachment to traditional LC and/or Sears subject headings. I've always thought the COOKERY subject heading was ineffectual. I say anything that helps the patrons find what they need is a good thing, but relevance is a big issue, too. I find Amazon very frustrating at times because I wonder how I got a hit on something that seems totally unrelated to what I am looking for.

One thing I wonder about tagging is if there are people out there that create tags just to bring people to their post. I am thinking, for example, a Neo-Nazi writing hate posts and then using taglines that might bring Jewish readers to it just to be hurtful to them. I'd like to think that wouldn't happen, but I'm not that much of an idealist. I suppose that would be one advantage to having a nonpartisan third party (i.e. a cataloger) assigning subject headings.

Twitterpated - Thing 12

It's been 3 weeks since I've worked on the NT23 and I've totally forgot what I did with Thing 11 - Instant Messaging. I can't even find the profile and avatar I set up. I'm going to chalk that up to "I'm not going to use it anyway" and not pursue it. I still don't have a cell phone and it seems like it would just be further interuptions to my work to have it open on my desktop. Given that I am going to choose to not set up a Twitter account for the same reasons. I think this training is great, but what happens to all the stuff that gets set-up and is never used. It just seems like I am just clogging up the Internet with trash. I wonder what percentage of stuff out there can be deleted. Just think how often you click on a link and it goes nowhere.

Having kept up with various blogs through the recent ALA conference it was obvious that Twitter was being heavily used by participants. Twitter allows individuals to participate in history (look at the recent elections in Iran), it shows that innovation can happen anywhere, it offers many-to-many communication, it is interactive in that it allows consumers to become producers of information, and allows news to be reported as it happens (as in the recent earthquake in China).

Despite my blog title I am not Twitterpated (i.e. confused by affection or infatuation) by Twitter. Confused -yes. Infatuated, no.