Week 6, Thing #13, 14 and 15

I'm pretty satisfied with pulling my favorite web sites from the drop down in the address bar, and even though I'm sure that del.ici.ous works well for some people, I found that it just clutters up my home page. It slows down the start up of iGoogle as well. I think there's a lot to be said for a clean interface; after all, that's been part of Google's appeal for going on nine years. I learned a lot from a professsor in library school about the reference interview: ideally, you ask questions that help the patron determine just what they need, and you help them find just that. You don't assume you know what they need, and you don't give them piles of material that overload them. It's way too easy to fall into internet overload.

I guess the same reasoning applies to how I feel about blogs and Technorati. I'm glad that they are there for the people who like them, but I'm not one of their fans. Celebrities come up near the top of the most popular searches--no surprise. The few posts that I read, even those that are library-related, did not have me wanting more. Many web 2.0 tools are wonderful, but the blogosphere makes me feel like I'm being swept over a Niagara Falls of words. It might be because the blog is often written so personally to such an anonymous audience that the effect is jarring. Too many assumptions on the part of the author.

Wendy Schultz has the best perspective on the "new" library that I have read so far. Too often the idea of the library as an important physical space is discounted or ignored in discussions about technology. She writes, "But Library 4.0 will add a new mode, knowledge spa: meditation, relaxation, immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought. " I think she's right, but I would argue that this isn't a new mode at all. That sort of atmosphere has always been the draw for libraries; it's what Barnes and Noble and Borders began to trade on; and it's what libraries had come full circle in trying to imitate. "You know, the library," as Schultz says. Yes, as the library has always been and should continue to be.