Week #6 Tagging and Folksonomies

Unlike last week's exercises, these are going to be tougher for me as I'll be sailing into mostly unknown waters.

For the first exercise, I created a Del.icio.us account and watched the tutorial. Then I went to kamcevoy's page and explored the various things one can do by clicking on all the different options. It seems like a very powerful tool to do research by using the tags. I also like the idea of being able to access your bookmarks from another computer. I'm definitely going to have to explore this website further. I'm not very comfortable using it yet and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what it can do for me.

I found the Technorati site to be rather overwhelming and my exploration of it was hindered by the fact the it was very slow loading pages. It's hard to believe how many blogs are out there and it was rather interesting to see what were the most popular searches. Apparently, a lot of people still find Paris Hilton to be fascinating.

The last exercise for this week required me to read some perspectives on Library 2.0 and blog my thoughts. As a new employee without a background in libraries (other than as a patron), this whole concept was totally new to me. My initial reaction to learning about it was one of excitement and enthusiasm. Incorporating some of this new technology seems like a good way to update and keep libraries on the leading edge and draw in the people that use Web 2.0 all the time in their daily lives, such as teens. However, I came across this article which gives a different perspective and takes a more cautious approach to Library 2.0. The ensuing discussion in the comments section is very good and gave me a lot to think about. Perhaps there needs to be more careful thought about how and what should be incorporated into libraries instead of just trying to force a fit of the latest hot technology on the web.