Monday, December 17, 2007

Thing #15: Rollyo, meet my strange shopping habits.

Oh, how I am loving these fun applications! I've never heard of Rollyo until today, working on this particular exercise, but I'm sure glad I know of it now!

Admittedly, at first I had a devil of a time trying to think of some subject to actually make a searchroll for, and I finally thought, what sites do I go to all the time, and I immediately thought of how my holiday shopping has been researched online--how I go to the same sites over and over.

And so DarthLibrarian Shops! was born. (Title is a most definitely a WIP.) This is a random assortment of places I shop either online or in person, and I really like that I only have to enter my search term ONCE and it will search all of my usual places, or that when I change topics I can stay on one site and not go opening 57 windows or whatever. Again, I'm all for supporting my technological lazy!

In a wider view, I can see Rollyo as a major time saver for casual web surfers to experienced librarians. It's kind of like the old web pathfinders on steroids, you know? I think it has incredible potential for finding a lot of information fast, but I'm also wondering how much a user will rely on this and not think to search further or additional sources, particularly if they're using someone else's searchroll. There's the potential for a little too much lazy, I think.

As with any developing resource, I'm sure Rollyo will go through lots of evolutions. For libraries, I can see it as a great tool for things such as local reference, ready reference questions, and several of the topics we have listed under Web Links.

No comments: