Thing 19 - myspace, yourspace

I hate myspace. Not because it is pointless or un-useful (is that a word?). No, I hate it because it is ugly. It is terribly aesthetically unpleasing. And some people make their profile pages just horrendous to visit: hard-to-read text over jarring graphics, audio files that autoplay when I don't want them to, those stupid meme graphics. Just, ugh.

But I do have a myspace page. I signed up for it earlier this year. I did it mainly to promote the new library zine collection -- to connect with other zine publishers and people interested in zines, as well as other zine libraries and librarians. I have used it to announce events and talk up some of the zines in our collection. I don't know how much my actions on myspace have resulted in drawing in new patrons to the library, but I have received a few zine donations because a publisher found me on myspace. Makes it worth it to me. I don't frequent the site, though (I already have plenty enough places to keep track of online). I try to drop in every couple of weeks, look for new "friends" to add every couple of months.

So, for this exercise, I decided to explore Facebook. I've been thinking about signing up for Facebook for a while now, so I'll go ahead and bite the bullet. I am hoping that Facebook will help me connect with other library school grad students and maybe others in the library profession. (Networking is important!) But, realistically, I don't know how much I'll keep up with it. As I said, all I need is one more website to visit. I can't even keep up with the grad school-related Yahoo groups I'm subscribed to.

I do think Facebook is a more aesthetically pleasing site than MySpace. I'm still feeling my way around, so I don't know yet how useful it will be to me, or if I'll keep my profile active in the longrun.

Thing 18 - Google Docs, etc.

I've already used Google Docs for a couple of things. Most recently, someone with YCAC created a spreadsheet using Google Docs for she and I to jointly edit / access, which we can use to track registration and attendees to our zine workshops. I found it very easy to use -- working quite similarly to Microsoft Excel. I was really surprised by the variety of tools offered by Zoho. I'm planning to try out its database option to see how well it works.

I don't think that these applications are particularly helpful for in-house staff use -- if we need to share a documents, we can do so by saving it to the Everyone folder on the network. However, they could be helpful for collaborating with folks outside of the library (like in my YCAC example above).

From a personal perspective, I've been thinking about starting to use Google Docs or a similar application in publishing my zine. I have multiple people who contribute content to the zine, which they usually send me as a MS Word attachment. But some people don't have access to Word (or Open Office), or they instead send the text within the body of an email, which messes up the formatting. Having them post their content to a site like Google Docs and then allow me to access it might be an easier, less messy way of handling their submissions. If the database application is versatile enough, I may use that for the zine, too, to share contact & assignment information with the review staff.