Off The Shelf

Google has branched out in many different areas, besides searching for information on the Web, one tool that may help you in your coursework is called Google Docs (http://docs.google.com).

Google Docs is free and you just need to register to get a user name and password.

It can help you: 

1. Create documents, forms, spreadsheets and presentations. It will also alsow you to access them from any location with access to the Web.
2. Upload and store documents that you have already created.
3. Collaborate and edit documents with others.
4. Create a permanent link to your document, spreadsheet or presenation and “publish” it to share with others.

Sound “neat” – I thought so.

In addition to being a librarian,  I am also a doctoral student. One way I use Google Docs is as a place to back up and retrive documents related to my dissertation. It is of course not the only place I back up my dissertation, but it is one option.

I also recently colloaborated on a presenation for a  conference with a colleague and we were able to collaborate on the document using Google Docs and then send a link of the presentation to conference attendees. It was much nicer than emailing the document back and forth. We were also were able to revert back to previous versions of the document, if the changes one of us made did not work.

Google Docs is one of the tools we cover in our presenation Enhancing Library Research Skills with New Technologies at Colloquium. Like the rest of our colloquium presentations it is on our Guides & Tutorials  page (scroll all the way to the bottom of the page).

You could also check out this short YouTube Video:

Google Docs in Plain English 

If you have question about using Google Docs or other Google Tools, such as Google Reader, Google Scholar or Google Books we may be able to help in the Library.

If you check out Google Docs, let me know what you think!

Robin