SOCIAL NETWORKING

This social networking is all new to me. I don't think I will fully "get it" until I sign up myself. I still have a lot of questions about it. Seeing as I have to finish my 2.0 blog tonight I won't get a chance to do this. But I can make a few observations from what I have seen.

I can see how social networking would be useful. It's basically just groups of people. Better than that it links up people with similar interests. Getting together a group of like minded people and telling them about a library's services or events could be very useful. Some of the websites mentioned in our 2.0 course were interesting. There seemed to be a few museums who kept a profile as if they were a person. I don't quite understand how they connect with other individuals. Also I wonder what would stop the Coca Cola company from setting itself up as an individual? Or any company with a product? What stops facebook or myspace being saturated with advertisements. How do you protect yourself against people that you don't want to meet or be friends with? I obviously need to log on and see how it works.

I find the idea of a virtual library in a 'second life' virtual reality is interesting. I could see a lot of the functions of the library existing in a virtual world. You could have an online virtual library with virtual books in it. We could all live in giant test tubes with wires connected to our brains like in the Matrix movies (just kidding). All we need is a small laptop like device (only a lot cheaper so we wouldn't have to worry about it being stolen) with wifi internet access resembling a book . Then we could log on to a virtual library and read it's virtual books. A library could be a warm room with coffee and bean bag chairs where people could bring their virtual book devices and browse books that only exist in a cyberworld. A bit far fetched possibly.

I have now come to the end of the library 2.0 course run by the state library of NSW. I have enjoyed it immensely. It might sound a bit exaggerated but I think it is a 'life changing' course. I am now a serious addict of blog writing. It has given me an understanding of many new internet developments some of which I intend to find out more about. I've gone from knowing very little to nothing, to knowing the basics of a lot of these things. I hope that the State library of NSW keeps this 2.0 website going for a while so I can refer back to it.

Thank You for the opportunity to let me participate in this.