If there is one benefit to this week’s assignment it was to reveal to me that just because I have been a user of a certain app that does not mean I actually know what I am doing. That may depress some people. It challenges and inspires me though.
As many in this CE have noticed, it’s a big world out there where library meets the read-write web. I could not help but notice a bit of techno-stress for these things. My own stress where these things are concerned with a number of things. One being not only keeping up and at least knowing conceptually what is going on, but two that I become a user of many of these offerings; the most difficult part is though seeing its place and implementation into library services– and having it be useful and effective. What I see as a failing of mine is perfectly illustrated with this week’s topic.
I have been a del.ico.us user for at least 2 years, and I actually really like it. It has made my personal tagging more useful for me, especially as I loooooooove the RSS feature. I take advantage of that, personally, by rolling it to my blog (personal). But it seems I have a conceptual block when it comes to sharing a personal account with professional ambitions. It seems I will need to make some decisions.
Just thinking aloud for a moment… in terms of my workplace, the professional library staff have their sort of specialties. If each one of us were to create a del.ico.us account with the intention of filling out our library’s web collection around our specialty, having a sole ownership or responsibility for each of these areas, could that work for me? This sort of collection development coupled with RSS, how could it fail? But that is my initial thought of how to get over this conceptual block of mixing my personal with professional tags. (I have to admit, there is not a lot of overlap.) It would help me focus better. I go all fuzzy and stupid when faced with the task of organizing personal tags. While it is how I’ve developed my professional life, my personal side is not so “clean”, or able to be organized, yet.
Also revealed in all of this week’s readings and discoveries is that I have not been a good user. This brings me back to my own techno-stress. I often cannot or don’t explore and invest enough time and energy in these offerings. Just recently, in the last two weeks, have I begun to incorporate the bundles in my tags. And, with the example of Ratcatcher’s tags and PeterJ’s tags… I know I have a lot of work ahead of me. There are so many possibilities with social bookmarking. And, the best thing for librarians is, I think, our users don’t have to understand it. It is just another tool in our arsenal for providing better services to our users.
Another way in which I experience my techno-stress is with the number of options. How does one chose the best option? How do I justify the time and resources put into “exploring” one over the other? I often don’t think I can offer a really informed decision when a decision is needed. While I do work hard on being able to “see” the potential, it is still true that many times it is a try and see type of situation. I hope as I learn more this will become less of an issue in my workflow.
And, finally, a lot of stress comes down to having the time to really explore. Just look at me right now. It’s 11pm and I’m still working, from home. I leave my job to come home and work. Perhaps I need to sort out a better workflow for myself, but I do find that it is difficult balance the demands of normal workflow with the time and concentration needed to sit down and figure something out. This is one of my goals. I would like to be able to do this. I’ll try to let you know, dear reader(s), how I fare.
But to sum up my thoughts on social bookmarking, I think the del.icio.us platform with its RSS capacity offers limitless possibilities. And, Ratcatcher’s same blog post, she mentioned in passing how Connotea is a good tool to organize faculty publications, and I thank her for that. That gives me something concrete to explore. Thank you.
Good luck to you all.
