Week 8: Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a great technological innovation. It allows you to store data somewhere in a remote server for editing, distributing, and storage -- without any worry that flood, fire, or computer crash may damage or erase the data. I'll upload some of important work-related documents onto Google Doc lest they be destroyed by computer malfunction. I can see the role of cloud computing in building a digital campus because students, faculty, and staff could share information and ideas more easily. Is it better than Blackboard? But the biggest downside of cloud computing is security and reliability. For many companies, their business data is the core asset. Will they trust their data and its reliability, security, and confidentiality to others in the cloud? I don't think so. I believe that cloud computing will be a big trend only when security problem can be solved. How can our library benefit from this technology? I am still thinking.

Week 7: Social Bookmarking and Tagging

Social bookmarking is a great way of saving bookmarks to a public Web and “tagging” them with keywords. Here is my Delicious account. It can be a very useful tool for the library to effectively select and organize the web resources and make them easy for patrons to search from any computer with any browser.

Like any technology, social bookmarking has its share of shortcomings. This tag-based system has no standard set of keywords and can be subject to errors or ambiguity. I don’t particularly like sharing personal bookmarks with people I don’t know. Because I am concerned about privacy, I will make those bookmarks private so that they are only viewable by me.

I have a problem with my Delicious account. When I use Internet Explorer to add bookmarks, Delicious keeps asking me to log in. I wonder if anybody else also encounters this problem and knows how to fix it.

Week 6: Beyond Internet Explorer

I have Firefox on my office computer, and I downloaded and installed a Google toolbar—as required by this training program. I first installed Firefox on my home computer because IE crashed very often for no reason. Firefox definitely performs better than IE in this regard.

The two browsers both look very good. IE 7 thoughtfully offers more customization than in the past, such as the ability to add more search engines to its search field. Firefox's open-source status and myriad add-ons give it a community edge over IE 7. Firefox is very adaptable and customizable between all of its add-ons and themes. At this point, I am not very familiar with Firefox. For point-to-point comparison of these two browsers, I need more time to study their detailed features.

Week 5: Jing

Here is my video how to search Melvyl catalog for online resources on children and family education – published between 2007-2008. It took me a while to figure out how to use Jing. I am still learning how to add voice narrations to the video. But it is worthy of the time and efforts. Jing is not only fun, but can be a very effective tool for the library to create a screencasting video to show our patrons how to use the subscription databases anywhere that has an Internet connection. We can also create library of navigation videos that show how to get from the library or institution homepage to the desired resource.

Week 4 Photo Sharing

Flickr is a very good online photo management and sharing application. Although I do not feel comfortable to put my photos on Internet for everybody to see, I opened a Flickr account to share photos with my close friends and family members.

We may upload, title, describe, tag, and organize library photos on Flickr to advertise our services, such as a virtual tour of library facility, a collection of photos showing the history of the Library, a gallery of our special collection items, etc.

Week 3: RSS

I have heard about RSS for quite a while, but did not know how it works. Thanks to Pollak-Library-10-Thing training program, I have a better understanding now. RSS is cool. This web feature allows you to get current updates from your favorite sites without having to click through each site.

I only briefly dipped my toes into RSS, but I have a feeling that RSS feeds can be integrated into the library’s web content to provide value added library services. Patrons can view new content from multiple web sites in a single interface. For example, we might be able to offer RSS feeds of new articles on a specific topic from many journals, or new search result in many library databases.

Web/Library 2.0

I believe Web/Library 2.0 applications will facilitate communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. But the dark-side of this revolution is the reduced barriers for people to access high-risk, potentially dangerous material. And I don’t think two-way online communication can completely replace human and social interaction. That’s why online education is not as successful as expected – although it is definitely the wave of the future.