GoogleDocs the Neatest Thing Since ....

Greetings!

Having just taken a thorough tour of GoogleDocs I'd have to say that I'm totally convinced that this is a most excellent thing for public libraries. Being part of a shared automation system offers many benefits which often get forgotten in the frustrations generated by being part of a shared automation system. GoogleDocs helps eliminate a couple of those frustrations. Providing good customer service when we have been unable (until recently) to allow patrons to have access to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software on the PAC terminals has been a very large frustration. Patrons have wanted to cut and paste information from PAC screens into various types of documents and have been unable to do so. Helping patrons set up GoogleDoc accounts would alleviate that frustration for both the patron and library staff. Using GoogleDocs also addresses the issue for library staff to access documents they are working on at home. This was especially an issue prior to flashdrives when one was dealing with a power point presentation that used spreadsheets and photos and took up more disk space than a HD floppy could handle. GoogleDocs would have been a very easy solution. And it still is. If one used GoogleDocs from work and home, you'd never have to worry about losing your flash drive -- you'd only have to worry that the entire power grid would go down and then that the backup generators would run out of fuel -- which, of course, a really good worrier can do without hardly thinking about it! --.
GoogleDocs also provides the ability to work collaboratively on documents which is a really big plus. It sure beats emailing red-lined changes back and forth to each other. The fact that you can go back and look at all the various versions is the biggest plus. I have lost too many documents in my life or overwritten a document that I would have like to extracted a piece from later, and it was too late. It apparently never is too late with GoogleDocs! That's my kind of redundancy!