IM - Thing 7

Instant messaging has been around for some time! Through instant messaging, folks found that they could talk to others on their own time without being seen or heard on the other end of the conversation. This was all before the world of texting too which is what fascinates me.

Today I use this service to communicate with friends who I cannot speak to anymore easily as they are long distance. Or I use it for short communications to friends while I am logged onto my gmail account. But the service is not as useful for me as it was in the past at home.

At work, I have been ready for a communicating device like the one we have. It works well when we need to speak to one another but not interrupt each other's workflow. I have also seen staff use this service as a tool to make announcements about books being missing and to show where a person is located at what time. I have even had IT take over my computer to make updates using this service which frees up their time needed to walk over and do the updates in person. But again, not all instant messaging services provide for this sort of robust computing.

All in all, I feel instant messaging is useful but as the trend moves to more of us having smart phones, I think the service will change some as people text and use their applications for locating and chatting with one another on their personal phones.

Digg - Thing 6

Digg is somewhat new to me as I have seen people posting items on Facebook and Twitter from Digg. I am fascinated by the theory behind it; that the story becomes popular due to how many people "dig" it.

I tend to have my own theory about the trends of certain subcultures and believe that certain groups tend to follow one news source over another. This aggregator tends to show the really zany or crazy top stories that have emerged in the popular section which is true for some aggregators. This tells me something about the groups that are reading and participating. Cool site that I will look at for news on the fly!

Twitter-Thing 5

I have had a really good experience with Twitter but primarily only as a person who likes to watch what other people are posting and not as a person that Tweets themselves. I suffer from a condition where I gain happiness by watching famous and/or infamous people talk about themselves.

But interestingly enough, I had an experience the other day with it that was new for me. I was in a webinar where they said more questions and discussion were taking place on Twitter using a specific hash tag. I thought this was great! I was able to follow the discussion and look hours later at all the Tweets surrounding the webinar.

Ian

Picture Sharing-Thing 4

I am intrigued to see other libraries using photo sharing for their libraries. What interests me most is how these folks get permission to use pictures of the public in the photos as much as they do such as all the students you see in the pics from Alexandrian Public Library. Additionally, you can tell that not everyone is uploading the information as the pictures do not always get labeled in the same manner such as the Old Bridge Public Library where many titles are sometimes capitalized and others not.

RSS Feeds

I have been subscribing to my own set of RSS feeds utilizing Bloglines for many years; I only recently began to understand the value of RSS feeds for a library such as ours since the world of social media came into my own household and onto my phone. For instance, I currently follow our own blog and see items come through on Facebook and the blog.

What I think about in terms of what we can do is pretty standard so far as advertising for materials and programs. But I also hope that any news that we create such as winning awards and giving information for closures and parking issues will soon become the norm for us to push out to followers of our blog. I am excited about the prospect of what we can do for those that follow us!