Google

So what's not to like. The advent of google made it more inviting and less distressing (time wasting) to use the internet. I have used it a lot in my library career, to teach internet classes, to instruct new library staff on some of the more interesting facets of the web, to find a picture of a historic cannon that a student needed for a school report, to a ferret out a specific scientific article on an obscure subject for a academic.
Today I looked at Google Books which I haven't used for awhile. The first category of full text books caught me with the title "Beyond the Library of the Future More Alternative Futures for the Public Library" written in 1997. A little dated perhaps but I read the first few pages and I might want to read more. It was written in an engaging manner, not boring textbook stuff.
But did you know you can look at full issues of magazines, pictures at all, as well as classics with free EPUB downloads, books on engineering and technology?
Lots to look at here with links to where you can buy books or borrow them from a library. Google is trying, not without their own gain in mind, to convince us that the massive downloading of all published material is a good thing. If I was an author I probably wouldn't totally agree. It's kind of like giving away a part of you and losing control to you're not sure what.
But for the time being, I don't make my living writing, I make it by working in an library and I think Google Books and other Google products have a place in my repertoire of information service skills but its one of many places I turn to, not the only one. And the jury is still out on whether I believe Google should have full rights to download....

Facebook

Facebook has been around in our family for a long time. I have seen, through my oldest daughter's use of it the bad and the good about it. Yes it was great to follow her senior English symposium on facebook and see her classmates presentations, no it was not so great when a former boyfriend? who lived in New York saw her status change to "in a relationship" (not with him)! My younger daughter refuses to use it at all because she guards her privacy with great zeal and she seems to keep more in tune to what is going in the world than her sister. I can see the possiblities, I can also see wasted time and just like using the internet what was supposed to be a small use of your time can increase exponentially. My husband has had great luck with using his facebook account to fill in the gaps in his geneological tree. I however do not have my own laptop, spend too much time at work on the computer and fill my free time with other pursuits. I can see when I am retired and sequestered away from society it might be a great way to keep in touch, for now there is just not enough hours in the day.

Wikipedia world

Wow, I was amazed at the breadth and depth of what Wikipedia covered. Trying to come up with a topic that I felt I knew more about than the person who wrote an article was difficult. At times I thought I was drawing close, more with spelling or typing errors and some grammatical corrections than with any new content. But even than I didn't totally trust myself to make changes unless, being the old time reference person that I am, I went away and thoroughly researched the topic with verifiable sources. I found the historical type of articles on well known topics seemed to be well done. Perhaps there are more errors with popular culture postings or breaking news, though I was impressed with the information they had on the earthquake that happened in California/Arizona on Easter Sunday. The information seemed pretty trustworthy because it backed up what was said in our local paper and by my mother who was in Dateland, Arizona at the time and experienced it first hand. So I don't know, for a quick and dirty search on a subject I would use Wikipedia but I would probably want to back up my research with verifying the information from another source because I found it was extremely easy to edit and if you had a big ego and a high opinion of yourself anyone could edit anything on the site and someone might believe them!