Living in the Cloud

The "librarian" part of my brain took over and I searched for an article related to that piece I'd heard on NPR about "living in the cloud". I found it on NPR's website - "Computing In The Cloud: Who Owns Your Files?" http://tinyurl.com/5wo2g7. Something to think about.... I am not someone typically adverse to using technology generally or Web 2.0 tools specifically. But I do think it wise to be aware and keep ourselves informed of just what we are getting ourselves into.

Google Docs

Spent a little while playing around with Google Docs. There is a similarity to the idea behind Delicious in that Google Docs frees the user from the computer harddrive. I don't know the number of times that I have been working on a Word or Excel document from multiple computers and ended up mixing myself up as to which version is the most current. I usually ended up saving the file with the date updated in the title so it was obvious at first glance (I know that viewing properties would give me the same information but just not as quickly). Even then I would sometimes not have the current one on the computer I was using. Using Google Docs instead would have allowed me to be able to access those documents from anywhere. This would certainly help me as an individual librarian, particularly if I tend to take documents home to work on or work from more than one location. Public libraries could benefit by using Google Docs when working on collaborative projects where more than one person is responsible for completing a document, when a group needs access to several documents but many not work in the same building or when sharing information between library systems.
One caveat, though, is to be aware of unintended consequences. I heard a story on NPR a few weeks ago (sorry, forgot which program) about how much information people are now storing "in the cloud" (ON the web as opposed to ON their own harddrive). The amount just keeps growing and has produced some unforeseen situations. Some of those consequences have been that if a server goes down, or if for some reason a user is blocked either temporarily or permanently, the information stored in the cloud is unaccessible. Sometimes permanently. There are issues with intellectual property rights too. Most people, myself included, just don't take the time to read the fine print in those user agreements we all to frequently automatically agree to just to click through to setting up our account.

Two words to the wise.... make sure you always have a backup of the current document saved on a harddrive somewhere and always read that user agreement you are agreeing to when you set up your account.