Thing 1: Creating a G-mail Account

This 23 things exercise is based on the Brevard County Libraries in Florida 23 Things Project. It is a project that attempts to get librarians to try new things and adopt Web 2.0 technologies in order to better serve their patrons and to connect with them in different ways on the Web. The first "thing" on the list is to create a Gmail account, an e-mail account which is hosted  by Google. I already have a Gmail account that I use for my personal and professional use.

Gmail is a great tool for librarians--it provides library users with a free and easy way to send and receive e-mail. It provides users with an instant messaging service (Google Chat) and allows them to chat using video, much like its competitor Skype. It also allows users to use Google Docs, which allows them  to edit and collaborate on creating documents (word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations). This can be useful for a librarian's professional exploits, both in collaborating with other librarians and in collaborating with customers and community groups.

I use Gmail and various other Google tools on a daily basis--it is just handy to have all of the tools that Google offers in one place. I use Gmail to communicate with my family (lately, asking *read: begging* my mother to please proofread my papers for my library school classes, requesting freebies from different companies on the web because who doesn't love free stuff?--and getting library job newsletters so that I know what jobs are out there and what skills I still need to develop before I go on the job hunt.) Speaking of the job hunt: EEK! Only a semester left, and I still  need to learn how to build websites. *sigh* It's difficult trying to know what employers will want six months down the line. I also use Gmail as storage space for articles and other PDFs that I need to read in the course of my schoolwork--they take up a lot of room on my computer and when I can just read what I need in Google Docs, it makes my hard drive happier--and allows me to add to my ever expanding music collection. 

How do you use Gmail? Have you ever had a library teach you to use Gmail or send you email through Gmail--I'm wondering if any libraries use Gmail for RSVPs for library events or if they use it to provide email reference services? Are there any other tools out there that are similar to Gmail? I'd love to hear what you have to say!

Next up: one of Google's many tools--Google Reader and RSS feeds!