Week 12 - the final session.

Social networking, Facebook, My Space, Bebo etc.
Sorry, not interested. I'm a private person and don't want my stuff "out there", and, once again, it is so time consuming. The argument may be that it will operate like the annual catch-up (name escapes me) that was sent to many recipients, but where's the personalisation in that (and I'm not that interested in other people's lives either). Misanthropic, that's me!

Now, library uses - free feedback by the look of it, once the patrons are introduced. In terms of surveys though I would be a little careful - the sample is uncontrolled, the results may be skewed. Patrons may feel more comfortable posting queries "anonymously", but the responses need to be kept up to date.
The only site I found interesting was that of the BL (showing my cultural background maybe).

Anyway, thanks for the ride. I have been introduced to many and varied tools during this course, and now understand a few more terms relating to the interactive web (2.0).

Week 11
Online applications and tools - yes, could be very useful when collaborating. Wouldn't want to be working with sensitive material though - despite promises of "secure" etc, there are always hackers around. Fortunately most library work is not really of a sensitive nature.
I don't think I would have much use for this in my area of work, but it is good to be aware of the possibility.
I would imagine that our children's librarian could make good use of this when planning combined activities (flyers and media promotion etc).
The file conversion site Zamzar had me excited on behalf of our library clients who sometimes need to change the format of their word processing and picture files. I'm not sure how the time delay would affect them, though, they are usually after instant answers!