Is anything ever really free...? With my copyright head on, I can't just click through terms and conditions with no qualms... so when signing up for a free PBworks account in order to test out wikis, I felt compelled to try and take in some of the T&Cs, wondering what am I really signing up to. If they're providing this for free, is there actually a catch? Who's actually responsible for my data 'in the cloud' - who's keeping it safe and who else can access it? I think all these new resources and tools are great, but does their ease of use inhibit us from actually thinking it all through? For instance, I quickly came across the proviso that the free version of PBworks must be used not for profit - maybe common sense, but really important to know...I have used the wiki on the Portal and found that fairly intuitive, so was disappointed to find this not so intuitive with PBworks. I seem to have spent ages just trying to add a new page and see a structure to my fledgling wiki. However, I've used the wiki in the Portal pretty successfully, and found that a really useful tool for logging information that our team needs to share but that changes - so stuff it's not worth writing a procedure on but is good to have documented in a share space - more like rolling news or an online noticeboard. For instance there are bits of information about certain publishers and exceptions to the CLA excluded works list which periodically change and it's useful to have the info somewhere for us all to add and refer to.
Having now added my blog to the UK library blogs I feel exposed! It was exposing enough, knowing that other library colleagues might see, but anyone anywhere?! Even though it's unlikely that people will look it feels a big step to actually publish a personal blog. I can see how it would be easier doing it from the point of view of publicising a service. Registering has prompted me to try looking at others blogs again, which has definitely been inspiring... and I resolve to try to be less perturbed by my lack of progress and more positive!
