Week 6 - Del.icio.us and Technorati

This week was the toughest so far, for me. Could be all the other stuff going on that has prevented me from getting to a total understanding of Del.icio.us and Technorati. Could be I just don't see the benefit to me personally of tagging.

I like the thought of carrying my Favourites with me. Since I take care what I add to my Favourites, I like to know all my work can be more efficient by setting them up and organizing them once. As for the tagging aspect I'm not sure it's as helpful to me. Most searches bring way too many results to effectively wade through. If I was seeking out infomation it could be helpful but right now I'm already on overload with all the data I receive on a daily basis - newspapers, feeds, listservs, email...

Technorati was another so-so activity for me. I'm not a blog reader so I don't find a need to go looking for more. I prefer those found through referrals from blogs I'm already reading rather than seeking out the random opinions found through a blog search.

While many of the tools we've discovered allow me to organize and make better use of the information I currently receive, these tools that help to seek out more information are useful to know about but will not be put to immediate use and blog type info. isn't generally what I'm looking for. I generally look for a more established information source such as a manufacturer's or organisation's website where the information is more likely to be credible.

Rollyo

At first glance I wasn't sure that Rollyo would be something I would use but as I got working with it I started to think of some possible applications for it. For example, our library website does not have a search capability. I created a Searchroll that includes our website, the City website and theowen.com (I'll add more Owen Sound specific sites later). Now I can search across all these sites at once (and ONLY these sites) to find city related information that I know I can trust.

I also find myself checking other libraries' websites to see how they are doing things especially things related to Unicorn and public access computers. I have all the Ontario Library Consortium libraries in my favourites but I have to look at each one individually. With the OLC Libraries Searchroll that I created, I can now search across 20+ libraries (once I get them all entered) for something like 'wireless' and see what the other libraries are doing all in one searchlist. Pretty cool. Thanks to Rollyo and Library 2.0!

LibraryThing - You Make My Heart Sing!

Wow - I know what I'll be doing with my spare time for the next while. LibraryThing is wonderful. I've tried various methods of keeping track of my books (owned, want to own, read, want to read, etc.) but I haven't found the perfect way to do it. I think LibraryThing is my answer.

I've only just scratched the surface of all it can do but I'm excited to continue to discover this great tool. I was impressed to find that the settings can be changed to search various sources. When I entered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and only came up with the American edition, I knew I wasn't the only person who wouldn't settle for that. So I did some poking around and found how to search the Canadian National Catalogue and several others Canadian options were available. That did it for me.

It was also very easy to add a widget to this blog to share my library with others. I opted for just a small link (see top right of this page) rather than have the book covers taking up too much space on my blog.

And since I find myself with some spare time today I'm heading back to LibraryThing to research further.