Facebook Redux

Books I Read appears to be a handy way to keep track of books you’ve read and books you want to read, and to share information about these books with your friends. It also appears to provide a handy reader advisory service. To me LibGuides looks the way a library catalog should look and provides subject searches the way a library catalog should provide them. The Virtual Librarian service appears to be too undeveloped to be of much use, but I think Brad Czerniak might be on to something. I like the idea that it could actually become a very reliable Ask-a-Librarian service. MyFlickr will be a great addition to my Facebook profile. I hope I can also add it to my blog. I’m going to try. So stay tuned. As with MyFlickr, I see Slideshare as a much more useful addition to a blog than to a Facebook account. If truth be told, I’m not crazy about Facebook or MySpace. I think library accounts on such social networking sites might be useful to creating of the library but not the best way to provide library services. I checked out the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, Ryerson University and Hennepin County Public Library catalogs. Interesting. Didn’t stay long enough to learn many of the features and benefits and to see what advantages they have over the tandard catalogs. Tagging perhaps. Times awasting. Deadlines and commitments. Gotta go. Ciao, or Tschuss as my German friends say.