The End Result

The Symbol of Victory
Originally uploaded by B Tal

My indoctrination into web 2.0 and library 2.0 has come to an end as I have completed Helene Blowers' 23 Things and Meredith Farkas and Company's 5 Weeks to A Social Library. Below is a list of some of my most significant discoveries.

1. Delicious is now one of my most used web tools. I hadn't used it in the past because I wasn't interested in a tool that I thought was a duplication of something I didn't use that often anyway (bookmarks). I have a pretty good memory and recall and since Google is so easy to use I thought I was saving a step by just repeating searches. But then I realized how inefficient and time consuming that could be if my memory wasn't as strong as I expected. With Delicious, I don't have to have superhuman memory or incredible search skills. Whenever I find a site that will be useful for research or returning to later I simply post it in Delicious and tag it so I can locate it later. Using Delicious has already improved presentations, instruction sessions, and reference help.

To make life really easy, I have installed the Delicious add-ons into Firefox so I don't even have to locate the Delicious homepage to post an article.

2. StumbleUpon: see this post for my thoughts on this search technology. It works best in conjunction with Delicious. I am not convinced that I will be using SU a year from now.

3. WordPress: I had always used Blogger before but messing around with WordPress has been fun and beneficial to other blog efforts I am involved in.

4. Flickr: Photos have always put me off because of how you usually have to adjust and modify them once they are on your hard drive. I don't have the time or in most cases the expertise to do this easily. Flickr takes the adjustment level out of photo storage and continues to find new ways to make photo sharing enjoyable.

5. If I spend 70% of my work time on the internet it just makes more sense for me to want to do my wordprocessing and database doodling with a web based service that I can return to on my laptop or at home instead of holding my work hostage on my office computer. Google Docs is easy to use and improving all the time and I have used Zoho some as well.

6. This entire process has inspired me to share some of the things I have learned with my co-workers and we are in our second month of training in Web 2.0. The response has been very positive.