Week 8, Thing 18 - Productivity tools

Word processing, saving, editing, sharing, etc. are becoming so much easier.  The more I see of productivity tools like Zoho, the more I'm liking them!  This looks a lot like Think Free which I'll be discussing for the final project. 

I am going to try to write here, then transfer it to the blog - we'll see in a bit how successful I am!!  In general, I just love the "shar-ability" of these types of utilities.  I don't know how many times I've tried to share documents through emails and it either cannot be opened by the recipient, or the format of the document gets shifted and is difficult to read, among other issues.

The capability to view documents offline is a great asset too.  It's not possible to be online 100% of the time and sometimes it's nice to be able to work on things on the spur of the moment without requiring net access. 

I'm beginning to really love the whole tagging thing!  I noticed in the general overview that folders can be tagged.  It's nice to be able to remember what a folder contains without having to open the entire file.

I also watched the Google sites tutorial.  I learned something I've been wondering about for a long time!  It showed how to make a word or group of words show up as a link, and I've never known how to do this (don't laugh)!  I've tried it a couple times with this document - again, I'll have to see if it worked!

I like how the Shelly text breaks down the various productivity tools for school and student management, from grade book applications to special needs students.  It goes more into software rather than web-based tools, but at least it gives great ideas on where and how to use them.  

Thing 14 (Wk 6 cont'd.)

So, what is it that Courtney (2007) points out that people really want when they search? End-users want to see good relevancy ranking in the results of their searches (p 15). Do all library catalogs provide this? NO! but as librarians, we can employ Library 2.0/Web 2.0 tools to help our users get closer to the Google-like results that they've come to expect of all searches.

The obsessive cataloger might cringe at the idea of library users being able to create their own means of personalized search strategies, but what better way for users to become comfortable searching for and finding what they want rather than what the LOC or a cataloger deems to be the correct subject heading for a particular item? I like tag clouds that show not only what people are tagging, but how frequently tags are used (it's the BIG ones!)

As for Technorati, I find it really cool to be able to search blogs. I played with searching for specific blogs, searching words and tags, etc. It is so much more effective than trying to search Google for a blog! I do have to say I haven't figured out how to "claim" my blog so it comes up as searchable by Technorati. I looked at the FAQs, but some of the terminoloy is a bit foreign to me and I'm not understanding fully what to do. What I have tried doesn't seem to be effective...

Courtney, N., (Ed.). (2007). Library 2.0 and beyond: Innovative technologies and tomorrow's user. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.