The deep breath before the plunge

Well, here I am at the beginning of a new course. I don't do much social networking and I've never had any great urge to have a blog, but I appreciate their importance in the world today. I also think that there is great potential for their use in libraries, along with many many other types of social software. Exactly how and why this software is useful I'm not totally sure of, but hey, that's why I'm still a student. I've been working in an academic library for about 9 months now and my work environment has not strongly embraced social software. Email is still the electronic medium of choice and many seem reluctant to change communications habits. But let's face it--email works. Is there a real need for the adoption of a blog or a wiki? Does it become just one more thing to check, eating up valuable time? These are some of the questions that I would like to be able to answer at the end of this course.

A note on the picture above: it doesn't have any specific relevance to the post, but photography is a big hobby of mine, so expect a random picture to accompany more posts.