Now that I know what web 2.0 refers to and I know that I’ve been using a lot of the cool applications and sites for years, I can answer that question a little better.  I certainly have done a lot with it, but there’s always more I can do.  As far as librarians using Web 2.0, we’ve had a lot of class discussions about how we really want to be on the band wagon, but that our profession sometimes takes so long to make big changes. 

That’s why the Michael Steven’s article on Web 2.0 spoke to me in what it said librarians should be in order to be successful integraters of 2.0 technology.  We need to be good yet fast decision makers that spot trends.  If we see a trend and don’t decide to act on a new technology, we’ll be too late, but if we act on every trend, we’ll spend too much on things that aren’t necessarily useful.  That’s a fine balance to strike.  I also think there is a tendency toward techno-lust among librarians that should be controlled.  We want all the coolest pieces of technology, but don’t necessarily consider how useful they will be to our job and the patrons. 

I think that the the thing we need to work on now is interactivity and having patrons add content.  Chip Nilges of OCLC calls this “collecting user intelligence.”  How cool would it be to have patrons post their own book reviews and rate the books they return.  Integrating Amazon like features seems to be the way to go.  We’ve had lots of discussions in my classes about privacy issues in tracking patron preferences and coming up with recommended items.  It seems like a lot of patrons would really enjoy this feature and we’d have to come up with some way to preserve privacy and expand reader’s advisory using 2.0 technology.

I do really enjoy being able to watch music videos and fun videos on youtube.  I have some favorites, I must admit, but it’s generally not my scene.  It seems like a great thing to get teens involved in filming and posting their own short films.  I can only hope that David’s program at University Heights will pick up!

Most of the widgets I saw at yourminis were thigns I had seen before.  I was not particularly impressed or excited by any of them, though the radio widgets might have been interesting.  I did find a prank widget on the election found here that I thought amusing.

This site allows you to put in the ingredients you have and then finds recipes that you can make.  This is helpful when you have limited ingredients, but it’s also helpful for people like me who find delicious sounding recipes and have to modify them (which I’ve gotten pretty good at).    They have some interesting ingredients, but I don’t think they’ve really figured out yet that special diet people (especially someone like me that has multiple special diet needs) are the people they should be catering to.  They don’t seem to have a lot of ingredients I use listed and maybe one day they will, but it will still be a useful tool until then.

I liked the idea of all of these cool tools like Stikkit.  I would use stikkit all the time if I had constant access to the internet via a phone.  I also liked the mystickies idea of putting post-it notes on a webpage and when you come back to that page, that note is there.  While they aren’t listed in the things to help students with productivity, I think that Vista (webCT, blackboard) and Moodle are tools that increase productivity since they have built in calendars and to do lists and communication options.  I think these sites can be helpful, but I’ve also had a couple of problems with them over the years. 

And the Pdf converters are great, too!  I have one of these on my computer at home, but this makes helping patrons with documents much easier!

I learned about delicious, but I didn’t learn the answer to the question that’s been nagging at my mind the most.  Why is it Del.icio.us?  Why not just Delicious?  Wikipedia notes that Joshua Schachter, the creator of Delicious, said “I’d registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six letter suffixes that let me generate the most words. In early discussions, a friend referred to finding good links as ‘eating cherries’ and the metaphor stuck, I guess.”  It also notes that they no longer use the dots due to a hack.

I’ve consistently, purposefully avoided other social networking sites.  MySpace seems to have an ugly format and since I already have facebook and a blog, I don’t feel the need to do MySpace as well.  I think the music functions are cool and I do visit up and coming artists there to get samples of their music, but I’m generally not interested in having another online presence.

Now I just need to convince my friends to join StumbleUpon and I’ll be all set!

Being a new employee, I remember that we got a handout with some of the cool Cleveland Heights hangouts on it.  It would be fun to create a map like this to go with that or substitute for it. 

As far as library applications, the underground railroad map Amy helped create for the Hudson Library seemed really cool.  Historical things seem like an obvious application.  It might be cool to create a map for new residents to see where all of our branches are and also highlight some cool things in the community.  I also really like scavenger hunts and an ongoing scavenger hunt program might be really fun.