Week #8 Online Applications & Tools

I normally use Microsoft Word on my computer for writing documents and so I haven't paid attention to similar applications out on the web. I can see how having a common place for multiple authors to add and edit documents and spreadsheets can be a powerful tool. I'm writing this part of the blog entry using Zoho Writer. It was pretty easy to use although I'm so used to Word that I'll probably stick to that for now.

The second exercise this week was to chose a site or tool from the Web 2.0 Award Nominees and write about it. Naturally, I chose one in the "Books" category. Biblio.com was the second place winner and is a website where you can search for and purchase used books, including those that are out-of-print. I've actually shopped at a similar website, Alibris. The neat thing is that it collects the inventory of over 5500 used bookstores from around the country in one location for customers to search. You are actually purchasing them from the individual stores. So, it is a very powerful tool for locating an out-of-print book. I could see how this could be valuable resource for libraries to replace lost or damaged out-of-print books.