It's Delightful...It's Delovely...It's Del.icio.us

I don't use it. I recognize that Del.icio.us is useful. At work I have my personal bookmarks and TelRef bookmarks saved on my H: drive and exported to all of the stations where I sit. I have a couple of favorites on my home laptops, but so far I have not wished for a full range of bookmarks at home. If I want to look something up, and my reference books (yes, I am a librarian with a ready reference collection at home) I can usually find what I want by going to sites that I know by memory or by initiating a fresh search. If we did not have the shared drives, etc. at work I am sure I would employ Del.icio.us or a similar system for my work-related resources.

Technorati is a neat name and a helpful resource. The problem with the vast amount of information that is out there is that there is always the fear that you are missing something. I am fond of quoting, "the man with one watch knows what time it is, the man with two is never sure." We are always chasing information and always in danger of missing something, finding contradictory information, or finding opinions rather than information. Blogs can be that mix of information and opinion that provide the insight you seek or make your head explode. Technorati can help you find the topics of interest to you, whatsoever they might be.

I have read these Web 2.0 articles before. OCLC NextSpace replaced the the OCLC Newsletter. I enjoy Michael Stephens. His blog is linked on the Professional Collection blog, In the Know for those of you who want to keep up with him and some of the other big names in Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 land. Our profession has always evolved and will continue to evolve and there will always be those who think that we are moving too far from our foundations and others who believe that our mission should be to go where the information needs are. Bibliographic instruction changes as the methods of recording, retrieving, and conveying information does. As the services we offer change, so must our enhancements. The difference now is that we have more methods of discussing our challenges and sharing our ideas. We don't need to rely solely upon 2 conferences a year, a couple of journals, and correspondence between well-connected peers. We don't even need to exchange email. We have blogs, Web pages, virtual reality, and any number of social networks. Libraries have always faced similar issues of budget cuts, new media, homeless vs. tax payers, growing pains, etc. The difference is now our kiss and cry area is global. I'm all a-Twitter.