Evernote is an online service that serves an interesting purpose:  it allows you to indicate digital items that you wish to remember, it stores them, and then makes the entire collection searchable.

Or more specifically, you can have it remember all your blog posts, tweets, iPhone items (photographs, etc.), typed notes, e-mails… whatever you tell it to store.  Everything gets indexed in their database, and will be there for you to retrieve at whatever time you wish to do so.

Right now this is simply a neat idea, and assuming that it works as smoothly as it’s description, a good way of archiving the wide varieties of communication and digital storage we use in our daily lives.  However, I think it is more than that… I suspect that this is the social leading edge of what is becoming more and more necessary in the digital age: the necessity of having some sort of structure to the hodge-podge of data that accumulates like peanut shells in a sports bar.

Another way of viewing this is that it is similar to the ideas behind the Semantic Web.  This isn’t a perfect match, of course, but the ability to match up commonalities between different chunks of data is the goal in each of these endeavors.  Understand that the amount and variation of the data is not going to be reduced in the years to come… we are going to need tools like this just to keep abreast of the tide of information that we will encounter.

Watch for other companies to address this idea; I will likely wait for something that can reside on my own server space (perhaps syncing indexes with others for greater effect), and preferably open source, rather than trust that this or some other cloud will achieve permanence.

found via the Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian

APML stands for Attention Profiling Markup Language.  Its purpose is to permit a standardized way to gather and transfer your interests from site to site across the web.  It is built using XML, and is definitely a new technology that may or may not catch on.  It could become an important element of using the web, because of the benefits it offers to users.

For example, Amazon.com tracks what you purchase, what is on your wish list, and even what you view (while logged in).  If you incorporated this into your APML file (which could be stored with an online service, on your computer or flash drive, etc.) your interests could be applied to other APML-compatable websites.

This has the potential, as with much web 2.0 technology, of creating privacy issues and complications.  It also could save users an incredible amount of time and effort, as resources relating to their interests would gain relevance and become much easier to find.  Think of the potential for searching news sites, link services such as Digg, and many other specialized discovery tools.

And yes, as John Fudrow suggests, it has a lot of potential for libraries.  Imagine how our users could benefit from this, especially when you add “suggested by others who liked this” and other social connectivity tools.

Last September I wrote about Libguides, an online service that creates web 2.0-style offerings for library web sites. I was impressed with the quality of their offerings, but had misgivings about the cost, especially when one considers that a library can do many of the same things with a bit of time and effort. Interestingly enough, that post is still high in my statistics, so people are interested in the idea and/or the company.

In a way, this is a sequel to that post, though not directly:

Interactive Course Assignment Pages (ICAP) is a site set up by Oregon State University (the “other” OSU to those of us who reside in Ohio) as an aid to creating Web/Library 2.0 home pages for college courses.

Blogs, Wikis and New Media is a site set up on WordPress.com, using WordPress software (same as this blog), that contains what was once held in the Utah State University’s courseware system.

These examples (and I am sure there are many more out there) show just how much can be done with time and effort, and minimal expense. We (meaning libraryland folk) oftentimes find it more satisfying to fit ourselves into someone else’s paradigm of how we should present ourselves on the web.

This is found in libraries that are locked into their institution’s web site, with perhaps the opac itself being the only area found outside the template.

This is found in libraries that are locked into their vendor’s offerings, perhaps customizing colors and wording, but otherwise sticking to yet another template.

This can be found in libraries that haven’t actively pursued their web presence at all, possibly because they feel they need to spend a lot of money or hire a web developer in order to do anything online.

This is also found, ironically, in libraries that throw Web 2.0 goodies onto their site without due consideration of how to effectively incorporate them into their services. Even though I strongly urge experimentation with new technology, too much of something can be more harmful than not enough.

Again, I urge libraries to look at your resources (servers you have access to, your employee’s skill sets, your budget) and figure out what you can do, and what you can expand into with a bit of learning and effort. Even if your resources are near to nothing, you can get a free blog on WordPress, and have someone learn the ins and outs in a relatively short time frame. For a small amount of money, you can get web hosting that will let you do most anything in the web 2.0 arena. The exception to this are those few tools which require a dedicated server, which gets more expensive and involved.

With just a couple of hours of work, I could set up web hosting, install a blog, e-mail lists, message boards, and a wiki. Customizing these (colors, options, etc.) would add some more time, but the net cost would be under $100 per year for a great many useful tools. Add to the mix: you get online storage for library promotions, information, and resources.

Hiring someone to do this setup wouldn’t add too much to your cost, perhaps even some form of trade (fine forgiveness, perhaps?). Imagine what your library might be able to do with something like this… and ask yourself what any or all of these tools would be worth. Not so much in money, but in time and effort.

Blogs, Wikis and New Media found via Weblog Tools Collections