Week 5

The above image was created using a sketch generator. The original photo was taken from the front car of the monorail at Disney World. Riding in the front car with the pilot is super awesome! My street sign was also created with an image generator.

I have looked at LibraryThing before and find it interesting conceptually. The hand scanners that could be implemented in a used bookstore or book sale to help me control my "vast holdings" of 1950s and '60s cocktail party books and 1960s and '70s fondue and hors d'oeuvres books would really be about the gadget more than anything else. I don't truly need to catalog my books. Even though I maintain 4 blogs, I am rather a private person and don't want my collections out there for the world to see. So I would not ever place my personal book inventory online. I also like to control the amount of unnecessary information that I place out in the electronic world. Even if I were to delete my account, I'm sure that information is still out there. As for the potential of LibraryThing as a readers' advisory tool...well, there are limitations in the software of the Web site as well as in the tagging by the users. In general, I prefer to use NoveList and lists generated by librarians as more authoritative.

Rollyo is something that I had never looked at prior to today. I can see how it would be appealing to have one-stop shopping for all of your basic Internet needs however I like to poke around. I like having favorites but I also like happenstance. Stumbling upon a new site because I searched for something and then clicked and clicked has led to some of my most fun discoveries for work and pleasure. One potential danger of streamlining the Internet process to a handcrafted set of sites, databases, and searches is that we might tend to become very limited (authoritative, but limited) in what we offer as results. I guess I have not yet felt that I have needed to organize my reference tools with Rollyo or something similar.