Web Office Tools

Our assignment for week 5 was to become acquainted with Web Office Tools. Google Docs & Spreadsheets was highlighted and after creating an account, it took very little time to create a basic word processing document and a spreadsheet. I was impressed with all of the options for modifying documents and for sharing / collaborating with others.

I also created an account in Zoho and I liked the functionality of this tool as well. It was easy to import a word document, name, and modify it. The spreadsheet function was also very simple. Both Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho have great potential for libraries.

Librarians could use Web Office Tools within their library and medical informatics instruction program, for the posting of student assignments or projects. Web Office Tools would allow students to collaborate on library instruction assignments, by sharing their documents with their classmates and instructors. Once their documents were finished, the instructors could access the student assignments at their leisure and insert comments, questions and a final grade.

Librarians could provide students and faculty with instruction on the use of Web Office Tools for research projects, highlighting such features as peer editing, continuous peer feedback and collective brainstorming. These tools are very easy to use; they're freely available on the Web, and they offer limitless opportunities for collaboration.

MLA committees and groups, no matter their location or time zone, could collaborate on library guides, procedures, projects or proposals.

One disadvantage of these Web Office Tools is that the Internet could be slow or there could be an Internet service interruption. While I don't plan to discontinue use of my MS Office Suite, Web Office Tools are easy to use, they're free and they offer excellent functionality. I plan to continue to investigate Google Docs and Zoho in the future.