This was recently forwarded to me and I thought I would forward it along as well.

Over at Infododads they have come up with the Top 13 Web 2.0 Tools For Librarians. I have decided to take their list and adapt it slightly for medical librarians.

1. Google Suite - If you are still emailing drafts of documents to people then you might want to look into using Google Docs. Co-writers, presenters, committees, and associations can all benefit from using it. Anybody who has to write and share documents with multiple people will find it helpful.
2. Meebo/Chatango - This is not just for the public libraries any more. USC Norris Medical Library, Duke University Medical Center Library, and UND Harley E. French Library are among some of the medical libraries using Meebo to provide reference chat. Due to IT policies, many hospital librarians are unable to use Meebo. That is unfortunate because even patients want to chat with family and friend.
3. Wikipedia - While it may not be the first place you look for medical information, it seems to have a pretty good handle on techie things. So if you are looking for more information on Common Lisp (no not speaking, but the dialect of the Lisp programing language), it is a good starting point.
4. Worldcat.org - I think medical librarians sometimes get so focused on "our" side of things (LocatorPlus, Docline, etc.) that we forget to look for items through WorldCat. I recently used WorldCat to order the "How to use Web 2.0 in your library."
5. Amazon.com - Again this is also probably a no brainer, I use it all the time along with Matthews and Rittenhouse. Don't forget you can integrate into your catalog like McMaster University Library did, your patrons then have the option to check out your copy or buy a copy and the referral fee can go to your library to help purchase books.
6. Del.icio.us - Despite the fact that I hate its name (it is a pain to type out) people are using tagging in the medical and science fields (Connotea). Ratcatcher blogs about the use of social tagging as a method for organizing information. Specifically she mentions Patricia Anderson at the University of Michigan Dentristy Library and Health Sciences Library, Stony Brook as examples of medical librarians tagging.
7. Bloglines - It is the most popular RSS reader and is now one of my main methods for staying up to date. Don't just use it to keep current on blogs, you can also monitor PubMed searches, journal table of contents, news sites, and create your own current awareness searches using LibWorm, MedWorm, or other search engines.
8. Zotero - Think of it as RefWorks or EndNotes for Firefox. It is a Firefox extension to help collect, manage, and cite research sources. David Rothman has been monitoring it and thinks it is geared more towards citation management of online items. UM Library even offers a class on it as well as other citation management programs.
9. Facebook - For a brief period in time I was able to get on to Facebook, but the hospital IT people renewed their blocking efforts and now I can only use it from home. What is interesting about Facebook are all the apps that librarians are adding to it. Some librarians are using it as another contact point in addition to their email.
10. Wordpress - It is one of the more popular blogging softwares used by librarian bloggers. It requires some technical skills depending on your hosting site, but the Wordpress plugins are what make it very cool.
11. MediaWiki - It is a very popular wiki software application used by many sites, it not only is used for wikis but is also used by companies as solution for internal knowledge management or content management. If you are looking for wikis that use MediaWiki look no further than LISWiki.
12. Ning - Ning allows you to create your own social network. Medical 2.0 mentions some uses Ning and social networking.
13. Twitter - Think mobile instant messaging. This is the one thing on this list that I am not quite sure as to how it can be used in medical libraries. The folks at Infodoodads point to Nebraska and Boise as examples of libraries using Twitter.

There you have it, my thoughts on the 13 technologies. What are your thoughts? Do you think they left anything off the list?