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!

Delicious insights

I always thought Best Websites was the Best!! If you were like me and were initiated to the internet through trial by fire and error, while working on a Ref Desk at CPL and teaching the first Internet courses to customers (without a script) you quickly learned that Best Websites imposed an order and discipline to a very unorganized new source- the Internet. I feel the same way about the Delicious bookmarks. At a ref desk we seem to get runs on the same question, whether it be a current political situation or a school assignment so having the bookmarks organized by currency and chronology makes it quick and easy to answer a question that may have been answered before. It also saves me from trying to remember urls that I use often plus it hasn't always been possible at all CPL locations to save your favorite websites on the computers you were using. I like knowing what other people are talking about as well, so I checked out popular websites on Delicious, just to see what is going on outside CPL.
Disadvantages- anytime someone else does the indexing, sets the tags, selects the keywords you are to some extent working out of their brain, not yours. So I guess, realizing Delicious is just another tool in your toolbag to try out is a wise philosophy.

Web 2.0 What does it mean in my life?

I guess what intrigues me most is where will all of this new way of communicating lead to -will people quit actually talking to each other face to face? What is the impact on libraries of this technology? And who uses it? I have 2 daughters in their 20's both of whom are very wary of using these methods of communication and losing their privacy. So am I. We shall see.