Firstly, I think that MLA could possibly use the features we used in Facebook, such as hooking up with friends using the "Wall" and registering for continuing education classes, roundtables sessions or even sunrise seminars with the "Events" application. They are useful tools.
Secondly, I can see the value of having a Facebook or MySpace for public and college libraries, but I don't think they are appropriate for a hospital medical library, where I am employed. I think the use of wikis among state, regional and national organizations within medical librarianship and a blogg on our hospital library web page would be better than using social networks on our web site.
Thirdly, the privacy issues within hospitals are very important and all the firewalls that hospital libraries have to contend with do not allow for such social networking. It is just not practical, to say the least.
If it wasn't for taking this class, I would have never even gone on these sites. I am glad I had the opportunity to experience what all the younger people are doing. I don't have kids, so this was a learning experience. I liked the fact that you can network and find jobs with ease, you can load your OPAC with ease (I think). Also, you could provide access to Worldcat without the fees of joining NELINET. (I think). The linking abilities seem to be endless. We are a nation of one stop shopping.

Finished the blogg roll

Well, thanks to Michelle, I was able to figure out how to add the link for the blogg roll. She said I got my gold star. I still update my wiki and hope it can go live here in the library. I look forward to "networking socially" with colleagues next week. Sue

Correction to my first post.

The statement, "Many bloggs, feeds, websites, graphics and other formats of resources can be organized on one blogg and accessed as often as needed," is incorrect. Bloggs, feeds, websites, graphics and other resources or files can be organized on a wiki, not a blogg.


The major difference between a blogg and a wiki is that a blogg is used for ongoing commentary. This discussion appears in reversed chronological order. I wish it went from the most current to oldest. It is tiresome to have to review all of the previous 30 or so bloggs to get to the most recent one. Maybe, in time, the technology will be improved. This tool is useful to announce new happenings, events, classes, shifts or construction in the library.

The primary benefit of a wiki is the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues on projects. There can be some control over who can access and post, which is nice. This would be useful when you need to write such things as a new strategic plan or rewrite state's Rules & Regulations for the Department of Health. You may choose to maintain and keep certain wikis in the public domain for hospital staff. These wikis could contain information such as the most recently purchased electronic books and RSS feeds on the latest research arranged by specialty.

Web 2.0 101-Step four

1)How Do you think you could use RSS Feeds at your library?
Librarians can provide individualized services to doctors by updating their literature searches using RSS Feeds and bloggs. Many bloggs, feeds, websites, graphics and other formats of resources can be organized on one blogg and accessed as often as needed. Library web sites can be organized by specialty and bloggs and feeds can be aggregated on the library web site under that specialty.
2) How Do you think patrons could use RSS feeds?
Just as libraries and librarians can organize media, visuals, text and websites, patrons can also do this for their own literature searches. In order for patrons to obtain automatic updates for the latest research in their specialty, they may start obtaining the bloggs and feeds they want collected on their computer. The main idea for both technologies is to have one stop shopping for your research needs or personal enjoyment or both.