web 2.0 where will the next generation of me'uncles web take me'Uncles libraries?

Reading the articles that little Kelly asked me to reinforces my concern for the library profession.
There seems to be this huge need to jump into every new technology trend, just so that we can say we have a digital presence, here I am thinking of facebook, twitter, myspace, secondlife etc...sure the digital face of libraries can not be discounted but what the fanfare of web 2.0 is forgetting that for many communities the actual physical place of a public library is probably still more important than the digital space it is occupying on Twitter, facebook etc.
The public library is one of the last public bastions that a person can enter freely without any discrimination, no is asked what religion, sexual preference, marital status, they are before they enter a public library and here in me'Uncle Island we don't ban our brown or red or yella cuzzies from entering our library. Our shopping malls have become privatised, so any drunks, homeless are shifted on quick smart thanks to Scrooge me'Uncle, but we let any drunk sleep it off in me'Uncle Library
My question would be for libraries to look at themselves and ask the question of what is their purpose? Hopefully it will be found in the mission statement ...something about serving our community. For the new emigrants, young families, old folks, students, children and the in betweens, the physical public library offers a welcoming place where they can socialise/meet, learn new things, use computers (as they don't have access to one at home) do homework in a conducive environment, things that they find are barrier free in a physical world as compared the digital world.
For this reason I believe that we can not discount the physical presence of public library just yet - at least in me'Uncle Island, if we were to become more like Singapore then yes I believe the digital presence of the library would be more important in many ways than the physical presence as a higher percentage of households have electronic access to a digital library.
straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Doing the Thing 17 with Luza, who needs the moonwalk when Luza is here

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Forget the glitterati & illuminati we me'Uncles are Technorati personified!

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

wiki-ing around with Luza

Yes wiki was more straight forward than I thought it would be. I can see the benefits of the technology but unfortunately I do not think it has been particularly well used by librarians.
Looking at Kelly's examples, there was nothing that shouted "wow only wiki could have made this happen" and other technology would have worked just as well, forums, websites, blogs, etc
And to be honest I am having trouble thinking of a way that we could use the wiki successfully in a public way; yes we could use it for a book club, a la Book Lovers, but in terms of our members I think the blog is probably less intimidating than a wiki would be. Perhaps for younger generations such as RiFT or Mannix it might be more successful.
Internally a wiki could be great for staff, (I am thinking it could a nice alternative means of communication for Digital Services to use as a way to communicate, but then again who know may be it would end up being blocked...) if it was able to happen - it would save on meetings, travel etc, though I guess if the discussion was sensitive it would have to be a lockable wiki as opposed to completely open...which seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Luza's del.icio.us as ever - as are all me'Uncles...

Del.icio.us yes I have to admit I have heard someone describe me as such more times than you have stumbled upon an honest politician...the readings were hard yakka, but the youtube video made it seem easy so I decided that it would be just as simple if I gave it a go and sign up to del.icio.us
Signing up was straight forward, I decided to skip importing all my bookmarks as we me'Uncles's are in the midst of a recession and have to share pc's hence it made sense to start fresh, rather than import some other bozo's bookmarks.
I decided to bookmark two of my favourite handball sites, and give them tags, which was kind of fun as being a genius I know more tags than the average bozo...having done this I couldn't wait to see if anyone else had bookmarked the sites and so I could compare tags were but bugger me down, it seems that I am the only one who has bookmarked them, which is making me hear Joan Armatrading wailing "Me, myself, I" - so much for the social networking aspect.
I am going to keep perserving with del.icio.us as I do fancy myself as a stalker and I am sure there is a handball fan waiting to swap sites with me somewhere some time...over the rainbow it just a matter of time before I develop a network of fans if I do say so myself.
straight up from Luza's mouth as always

pbwiki-ing around with Luza

Finally a simple straight forward exercise for little ol'Luza to do.
I had no problems adding me blog to the Favourite Blogs page, and since it was a small task to do time wise I decided to add a few of my Favourite Handball & Corgi Websites to the favourite websites page... the temptation was there to delete everybody else's work but I refrained myself as I know me manager still has to do this exercise and if anything goes wrong she would be on me case, quicker than the vultures on MJ's money!!

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Skyping about Luza's technology revolution

I know I know I keep mentioning the recession, but it has really hit us hard here at me'Uncle Island especially since we had a wee fire at the money factory, to cut a long story short ol' Paddy me'Uncle fell asleep reading the paper while smoking his pipe and before you could say "bugger me days" the factory was ablaze even Fireman George me'Uncle was unable to divert the disaster and now we are stuck trying to use the old #5 wire and 4x2 plank's to survive.
But thankfully Skype me'Uncle came up with this clever idea of VoIP. In a nutshell we can now make free calls to all me'Uncle rellies in New Plymouth, Wellington, Singapore and Ireland all for the grand price of zilch, finally life is looking up. I have been able to indulge in three way conversations with the me'Uncles' in NP and Singapore at the same time which is really really cool. We are even able to instant message while talking and seeing each other on the screen.
Admittedly there can be problems with the calls being dropped mid conversation, and the sound time delay but for the price of zilch we are willing to put up with these minor inconveniences.
And there are ways to keep your details private so as to minimise cold calls from strangers, so yeah we me'uncles are skype fans.

straight up from Luza's mouth as always