Web 2.0 tools: www.revolutionhealth.com and its ambitious scope

This website was started by AOL founder Steve Case. I like it's thoughtfully worded, pro-activist mission statement. It talks about interceding in areas of American life that are dysfunctional, that are in "need of a better way." I am beginning to see that people use Web 2.0 to empower themselves, to fix things, and to make a difference.

This website incorporates Web 1.0 aspects as well -- things like information about medical conditions and drugs, or advice about buying health insurance. The Web 2.0 aspects are interwoven into the website. For instance you can search through a database of dentists (Web 1.0), and some of the records have comments posted by patients (Web 2.0). Other Web 2.0 features are: blogs about health conditions that you can search, or comment on, or add your own; a place to post your personal story of illness to share with others and where you can seek the support of others who have gone through the same recovery; and you can start your own health portfolio (which I did not try, since it required registration.)

All this is time consuming and requires a level of commitment that I personally would be reluctant to make -- unless I had a very strong interest in a subject. As I moved around this site, I noticed a lot of empty spaces that nobody has taken advantage of, such as there were no comments added to the dentists I randomly selected in their database. Searching blogs for a medical condition relating to "retinal tears" brought up only the most general information readily available elsewhere. The promise of this website is yet to be realized. It strives to be all things to all people as regards health issues, as probably do other similar Web 2.0 websites. Web 2.0 may turn out to be very repetitive.

Zoho Writer and getting smarter

What good news! My computer at home doesn't have Word, so I desperately need this web-based word processing. I didn't know about it before today!

I went ahead and tried the sharing feature, which worked good. The website successfully emailed my document to my other email account within a short time. I was able to read the document. But, to be able to edit it, I would have to open a new account with Zoho Writer using my other email address (I am assuming.) So this collaboration capability works pretty well. It's similar to a private wiki.

Keeping straight all these capabilities of the various new technologies must be good brain exercise. These websites may be making us smarter, I'm afraid.

Pbwiki as a virtual ongoing staff meeting

This seems like it could be very useful to help a team to work together. You can brainstorm in the Comments area and come up with a final document that would be placed under the main tab. We're talking right now about doing this among our reference staff. For this type of in-house use, it's good that you can keep the wiki private and accessible by only certain people. Everyone should agree on a protocol for identifying who is saying what in the comments area because the sandbox at least doesn't automatically identify the contributors.

Wikis and making full use of them

The Bull Run Library wiki seemed more like a website promoting the library's programs and less like a collaboration open to all people. I didn't see any contributions by the public. It seemed very controlled, which at first seems contrary to the idea of wikis, but I suppose it shows you can use the technology to a fuller or lesser extent to match your intention. But, I wouldn't want to offer something new and exciting and then turn it into the same old thing you've already got going somewhere else.

A similar lack of collaboration is evident with the subject guides from St. Joseph's library. I clicked on the discussion tab for several of the guides and there were no discussions. That means that the original documents were never edited by anyone. If these guides exist as discrete finished entities, why not just put these guides on the library's website? I also noticed there is a restriction limiting editing to librarians.

Organizations are justified in making the technology suit their needs. But it does seem like these libraries are using this technology for the sake of being able to boast that they are using new technology more than for its actual advantages. Why use a collaborative content tool when there is no collaboration going on?

The spirituality of Library 2.0?

Patrons have traditionally been at the center of our concerns. The emphasis on patron participation and collaboration that Library 2.0 talks about is nothing new. In the recent past, most libraries promoted the idea of "excellent customer service" to make sure patrons were getting what they needed from us. The library's role was to learn from the patrons, rather than to dictate a series of choices for them to choose from. Whether we succeeded is questionable, because perhaps the tools weren't there to actually hear what the patrons needed. Now with Library 2.0 technology, can we hear better?

One of these articles mentions that patrons want everything -- magazines, blogs, podcasts, downloads, books. This reminds me of the New Age concept of universal abundance. The universe wants to provide for all needs. That is its function, or else why would it exist? By the mere fact of existence, the idea of limitation is shown to be false, according to this view. Is there a spiritual side to Web-and-library 2.0? I wonder if libraries will be able to break out of the mindset of skepticism, which had the benefit of enabling them to be inclusive and nonjudgmental. Doesn't Library 2.0 require libraries to be inclusive in a way that embraces a spiritual commitment that goes against some of the most revered library traditions?

Change and Technorati

A search in Technorati for blog links to our library website reveals that congratulations are in order to NCR for having created the Mousing Around tutorial. It's obvious the tutorial is being promoted and used around the country.

An interesting hit for the search "web 2.0" was one entitled USA 2.0. It says that change is afoot and the government had better pay attention to what people want. This caused me to realize that the term 2.0 is becoming synonymous with making your opinion count for something and thereby making a difference. That would be a major change! Up until now, some of us have felt powerless to change the world for the better.

Another interesting hit was how to make your website "look" like a 2.0 website. Our expectations are being raised in the sense that we now expect all our interactions to respect us as individuals.

Tags and del.icio.us

Using del.icio.us for research? Its one big advantage is that someone has tagged a website and given it subject headings. By contrast, search engines use automated searching. Search engines don't have real people to evaluate each website and to thoughtfully describe what it is about. The hits are sometimes just literal word matches, not the concepts behind the words. So the hits in del.icio.us could conceivably be more relevant and closer to what you are looking for.

WebFeat coordinated searching

Things are hopping in Hartford, CT, my hometown. Thousands of hits on our library databases, some obscure, some important, but all have the potential to be fascinating to a native-born. I noticed that Reference USA only returned 2 hits, when there should be thousands of listings. I'll have to look at that closer. In the near future, this exercise reminds me to try this resource to answer patron questions and compare it to Google's results.

LibraryThing.com

My LibraryThing.com library is: www.librarything.com/catalog/unrequitedlibrarian

This website works great for cataloging and reviewing books. I am impressed by other users' insights into books as revealed by their reviews. But actually, most users don't write reviews. My account has been active for over 1 year, and I have not received any comments on my reviews. So either my reviews don't inspire people to react to them, or people aren't initiating much contact on this website and are just using it for cataloging.

Image Generator: "Need is my tactic"

This quote from a Robert Pinsky poem is so true that it needs to be broadcast to the world. If you read the whole poem (Samurai's Song), you realize you have everything you need within you if you make the conscious effort to discover the infinite possibilities within yourself.

Anyway, this Image Generator exercise is fun for a minute. I wouldn't want to spend too much time using these gimmicky and superfluous (as in, get a life!) tools.