What do Small World Networks and Kevin Bacon have in Common?

In a strange case of seredipity, while I was reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky I saw a fascinating documentary that used the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game to explain Small World networks. Shirky devoted a chapter of his book to networks (particularly how network theory helps explain social networks). It fascinated me and prompted a post called Six Degrees Makes for a Small World on the RISG blog.

Here Comes Everybody...

Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, is a fascinating look at the way Web 2.0 and social networking is touching every aspect of society. I found it highly thought-provoking and encourage anyone who's interested in this stuff to have a read.

I talked about a couple of things that struck me from the book on the RISG blog. Here's one...

Beth Jefferson, Bibliocommons and the Next Generation Catalogue

This interview with Beth Jefferson, Founder of Bibliocommons, inspired a post on the RISG blog about the future of library web sites and catalogues. Go on, read it...

Sutherland Library Catalogue Google Gadget

I've created a catalogue gadget for Sutherland Shire Libraries (MPOW). It was reasonably easy to do - the hardest bit was getting the CSS to work in both IE and Firefox.

It's at the end of this post. You can also see it on the Sutherland Shire Libraries News blog.

I've written a bit about why I did it on the RISG New Technologies blog.

If for some bizarre reason you want to add it to your site feel free. It's available from the Google Gadget directory.

Here's a video of Clay Shirky's speech at the Web 2.0 Expo 2008. His recently published book, Here Comes Everybody, looks at the culture of participation that is growing around Web 2.0.

I know that most public libraries in NSW are thinking about using Web 2.0 tools to reach out to users. One of the questions many people have is why we should be doing it if our community doesn't currently use those tools? Indeed, we are struggling to get much in the way of comments on our blog from the members of our community at my place of work. Comments aren't really on fire on the RISG blogs either (c'mon people, share!). But it's only a matter of time. Clay Shirky puts that argument in an eloquent and entertaining way.