I really dig the range of groups and people that use SocialSite widgets. On my last post I wrote about the Sacramento Kings, and the latest site to come to my attention seems (granted, in a shallow, stereotypical kind of way) the exact opposite: civilibrarian.com. From jocks to nerds, everyone loves SocialSite!

Written by Chris Freeman, a Branch Services Manager at the Sacramento Public Library, this interesting blog chronicles the thoughts and experiences of someone passionately involved in both the public library system and the quickly-changing internet. He muses over the implications for his line of public service of Netflix, Twitter, easily created QR Codes (Quick Reference codes, you’ve probably seen them, they look like this: and when you snap a picture of them with your smartphone they act as a URL) and the other emergent aspects of what we clumsily label Web 2.0. He points out the ways libraries should be or are responding to these technologies and provides snapshots of working life in a somewhat embattled local library system in engagingly written posts. Fascinating, well-thought-out stuff, making his use of and interest in Thingfo’s Socialsite widget (which, in his post calling attention to it, he calls a “pretty cool little tool”) nicely flattering.

He describes how he’s using us this way:

Basically, Thingfo lets me pull all kinds of content that I define through feeds comprised of usernames, rss feeds, videos, blog posts, and blog comments from sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, Blogger, Wordpress, and more… It seems like libraries could pull together an awful lot of customer and staff-created online social content in one place on a website.

Thanks, Chris. Couldn’t put it better myself. In fact, I couldn’t end this post better than with another snip from his writeup: “And it’s all free!”