I looked at the various categories. Some have already been talked about in this blog.
I admit I couldn't see how Lulu's self-published books could be useful to an academic library- materials selected for purchase by the library should be authoritative. Possibly they could be useful for some very specific subject areas where few other resources exist- e.g. a local history book. There are some free resources, but I think students would be better off looking at the free web.
Classifieds are probably not useful except when assisting people to find accommodation / second hand products. Possibly a library could purchase cheap furniture and equipment through them. (I much prefer ebay, which isn't listed)
The winner of the "Digital Storage and Remote Access" no longer exists, only three months after the awards. Hmmmmmmm.
Document storage applications look really useful- you can easily embed training and information in a web page. This example comes from the Elsevier training blog:
RSS At Your Library
The mapping applications could be useful for showing patrons where to find the library, although I think internal maps would be more useful. I do like what can be done with Google maps- this man has created an alphabet out of aerial views in Victoria. You can click on each letter and find out exactly where it was taken.View more presentations from Martin .
I admit that I thought Twitter was a waste of time, until I needed to find websites on the Bushfires. There was a lot of good content linked from Twitter. I could see Twitter being used internally to good use- e.g. on our Fridge, we could have twitter updates like #Lift 3 down or #Come to the Raynard talk this morning at 9am in Experimedia. Libraries that use Blackboard could also have a twitter feed, reminding patrons of events, training, and changes to library hours.
Google Blog Search is my favourite blog search engine. Technoratti is quite useless, imo. I've never been able to find relevant content through it. The one problem I have with Google Blog Search is that if I use it too often in Firefox, it starts thinking I'm a spammer and refuses to let me search anymore.
Facebook could be useful for libraries- you can easily create a page for an organisation, and then have updates that appear on people's Facebook feeds. Facebook has far too many privacy problems for me to embrace it as a user.
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