Week 6 of Learn 2.0

I liked the video for this week, New Jersey obviously has a devoted library following! I have to say, though, most of the people seemed to like that the library was so quiet, something that I'm not sure we can lay claim to. Between music playing outside and in, constant programs, daily children, and no outright cellphone bans, we're probably not the quietest place to be. But just because we're not "shushing" people like the stereotypical librarians of old doesn't mean that we let the noise get out of hand. People who are alive make noise, and we understand that the normal sounds of humanity cannot be quelled. We're just not above warning and trespassing people who break the limit of acceptable noise levels. Also, rooms can be rented out for the specific purposes of quiet study, if that's what you need.

As someone who is buying a house on soon myself, I can say that PropSmart would have been a useful resource in finding a new home. Instead of dealing with classifieds (in which you often have to call a realtor and give them the number of the listing just to learn the address), driving around neighborhoods looking for good prices, or going through a realtor (and spending days driving around looking at their listings), you can just see a quick comparison of houses in the same place, price quotes, even pictures for a lot of them. All of the contact information is easy to access, and being able to see from the satellite images the size of the backyard, closeness to major highways, and width of roads in the neighborhood is a major plus. The other mashups were also very interesting, I particularly loved MotorMapUSA, which showed me that my ideal 1957 Chevy Bel-Air is for sale right here in Orlando! Now, if I could only get together $12,000... ::sigh:: In Wikimapia I added some tags for my hometown of Panama City. I like the idea of everything being tagged, so that you can not only look from above (as you already could with Google Earth), but if you're having trouble finding, say, your house, you can look at tags from around the area and be able to tell which little dot of roof is which. The site is easy to use, and it's easy to add tags, too (although I had considerable trouble using the "polygon" option, to narrow my tagged space from a big square to a more realistic outline of the location).

I had already looked at LibraryThing in a previous week, but it's still a great way to organize your library (I actually think it seems a little more polished than Shelfari, although that's also a good resource). What Should I Read Next? is cool, but you can get the same idea from suggesters on LibraryThing, Amazon, and many others, it doesn't seem worth it to have a whole site devoted just to that. I'm actually really excited about BookMooch. It's the perfect way for me to unload some of the books that I have, but am never going to read again. I mean, I would never throw books away, and donating has some intrinsic value, but giving it to someone who actually WANTS it is so much better! And to be able to get books I want from other people without having to buy them is also great. The "points" system (basically, you have to give away at least 1 book to have enough points to get 5 sent to you) is a neat way to keep people from hoarding and never giving anything back! I definitely think that I will become a part of the collective trading back and forth. I also signed up for a LibraryElf account, because although I don't really need to get any extra email reminders, I wanted to see how it works. It seems like it would be (I'm sorry to say) a little more reliable than our own email system (or, you can even have reminders RSSed or texted to you, especially good for parents and children, since you can track multiple accounts from one website). Also, the benefits of having your holds listed out (and when they expire) are immeasurable. I wonder if it would be kosher to recommend this system to patrons?

GuruLib is probably the site that I'm most excited about seeing this week. You can catalog your whole library (like in LibraryThing or Shelfari) electronically, but with the added bonus of keeping track of books you've loaned to people, keeping a virtual version of your shelf arranged as you have it, and also being able to keep track of your music, movies, games, and software. There are also other other cool aspects, like having the website automatically track prices on books on your wishlist, so you can buy them when they get to your ideal price. It seems easier to find items to add to your shelf, because there are so many ways to do it (a scanner or webcam of the UPC, the ISBN, or even just searching by title and author). Admittedly, I'm a little disappointed that it said I couldn't add anything to my shelf for about a day after I'd created an account, but I'm willing to wait for something like this. I often surprise myself by finding something on my shelf I didn't even know I had, but now I can keep track of it all from any computer! As soon as I can, I'm going to start tagging stuff.

I also visited Del.icio.us and PopURLs for the Adventure activity. Both of these were easy to view. I signed up for a del.icio.us account (my boyfriend has one and loves it). Haven't there been times when you were away from home and wanted to check a webcomic you usually read, or just visit a cool website that you have in your "favorites" folder on your own computer? Now you can keep a virtual list of these links (where other people can see them, too) and be able to do these things from anywhere. PopURLs keeps track of popular hits from del.icio.us, Digg, and Reddit, other user-generated link websites. This way, it's easy to keep ahead of the news and trends, because these articles and links have already been noted as interesting to so many other people. There's no need to search through the front page of any of the sites individually to look for cool stuff (although each page also has it's own "highlights" or "popular" sections, this way they're all put in one place so you can search them at one time). It's like having del.icio.us, Digg, and Reddit all on your Bloglines, but without having it update every single time something new gets added, just telling you about the good stuff. Come to think of it, you can add popURLs to your Bloglines, and keep track of them that way, too!