social bookmarking sites

I skipped ahead a bit, to Exploration 8. I explored del.icio.us and I am intrigued by the concept. I can see where this could be helpful to librarians, teachers, and even business people. Grouping favorite websites and links to one internet location, and tagging so that you can find ones that share the same or similar subjects, could be quite helpful. That you can even retrieve if your computer crashes, because it's saved on the web is a definite plus. This would be better than saving all your favorites on your computer. You label with your tags and then you can search for the ones you might want to use or search for the site you saved, but yet don't exactly remember which site it was. Patrons could benefit by knowing about this concept, and there are many sites now available for keeping your bookmarking info.
In the library, this could replace the old notebooks we organized for patrons on different subjects. Staff could save great sites for homework help, business and health help and so many more. I hope it does not, however, replace our recommended sites, which I find so helpful for patrons. Or perhaps, these could be added to the recommended sites.

youtubeing

Well if life doesn't imitate art.
Here I am just learning about all the new web2.0 information sharing, and my father shows up on you tube. This is amazing. He got interviewed for Veterans Day and spoke about World War II, his training, the D Day invasion, in which he participated, and other recollections of that time in his life. Now he is on youtube for the world to see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1EBexdLb3o

I still have a lot to learn.

Social Networking

Social Networking sites are appealing to all ages, it seems, and many people seem to be connecting and reconnecting via Facebook, MySpace and others. Folks find others, long lost friends and relatives this way. It has been an exciting time for some when they reconnect. This creates new friendships, renews old aquaintances, and for some, is a lot of fun. My grown children are on Facebook and have been encouraging me to give it a try. I am thinking about it as it would be great to catch up with old friends if they were posting also.

One of the benefits could be communicating with staff, if everyone had a link to the same social networking site. I guess if patrons are using these networking sites anyway, why not add library information into the mix. We know kids are definitely using the sites, and why not use this as a way of informing students about all the library has to offer.