I'm thinking about the disconnect between a certain technology and its purported virtues vs. what a user's real experience is when trying to apply the technology. When I read about Zoho and Google Docs I felt excited because they seemed like sensible, interesting and useful programs. However I read the comments from other 23 Things users and realized that there is so much frustration with these things.
I know that there's always the learning curve aspect, but if semi-savy people have a hard time with something it makes me think its not ready for the world beyond the tech heads. Time will tell which of these 23 things stick around, and which become dinosaurs.
It was interesting to see how people edited the document in Zoho and Google Docs. More has been done on the Google one, but I slightly prefer the Zoho spread and features just from my initial overview. Some of the comments were thoughtful, others too cheeky for my taste. Public collaboration is a fascinating realm - I'm sure some gems can come forward that wouldn't have been included otherwise. It's really a cool lesson in democracy. Unless participants are working for the "greater good" though it seems like things could get out of hand (especially if writers decide to just try and be funny... not that I don't like funny).
I can see how a library could use these tools, either with inhouse (or outhouse, meaning inter-library) staff collaborations or with something the public can come in on. What if we were to put our mission statements or other policies out there and see what the public might have to say?
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