Week 14: Summing up

Well, the 14 weeks have flown by in a hurry. I've taken a lot of distance courses during my time at FIMS, and this has been the best in terms of feeling very interactive. I think Amanda deserves credit for choosing to go with Drupal, rather than WebCT or one of those other clunky online course providers. The library I'm working at now will probably be moving our site to Drupal in the near future, so it's been beneficial to make extensive use of a Drupa site, and get a feel for what it can do. I also love that I've been able to keep track of new posts through RSS.

Since I was already optimistic, the course hasn't changed my mind any about the use of social software in libraries; but it has reinforced my reasons for thinking it useful. I've been most impressed by RSS (my Google reader is now visited routinely), although I think the nature of RSS will make it useful for only a portion of users. I think virtual worlds have the least going for them, and I expect that administrators will begin to look for ROI from the virtual world projects of their libraries, and find it to be lacking. I would separate virtual worlds out from gaming programs, but then, I would also tend to place gaming programs into the promotions/events area of the library field, rather than the social software side.

Media sharing is here to stay, and I expect it will only increase in prevalance. How long until television becomes utterly commonplace on the Internet? For that matter, how long before television service becomes more and more like media sharing on the Internet?

I have mixed thoughts about social tagging and folksonomies. On the one hand, I can see their potential, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that I will continue to use delicious after this course is finished. I've also been a little disappointed by some of the folksonomies that I've had a chance to look at. As libraries and vendors work to achieve folksonomy "critical mass", it might become more useful.

 Wikis and blogs I love - when they are well done. When they are poorly done, they cause more confusion than they're worth. Libraries can definitely make good use of these tools, but they should always be carefully planned and implemented.

I've really enjoyed this class, and I think I'll be able to use a lot of what I learned in my job. The library I work at is small and young, so we have a pretty good level of autonomy in regard to our technology choices. Over the next year or so, we're going to be undergoing some big technological changes, including the aforementioned switch to Drupal for the website, and a new ILS (perhaps the open-source Koha platform). Thanks to everyone for all the interesting posts and tags!