Thing 16: Collaboration Tools

I'm old enough to remember floppy disks (vaguely, though!) and USB sticks and endless emailing between co-workers and my own different email accounts. But cloud storing is geniuos.

 

For a long, long time I've used Windows desktop for saving my most frequently used - and hence for the time being most valueable! - files. It's probably the stupidest mistake to make just after using my own name as pasword to my computer :-)

I've used Dropbox a bit, mainly for storing huge files, that were too big to send by email to customers. I've also started a half hearted attempt to move my valued files there.

But after this Thing I have fallen for Google Drives because it's very intuitive to use - unlike e.g. Google Plus. It looks and works like a mix between Google Mail and Windows Pathfinder - I particularly like that I can save right into Google Drives from e.g. Word after having downloaded Drives to my pc.


I can see how the many settings and sharing options in Google Drive could be very useful. And then you can create documents, sheets and slides directly on the site, which I like very much. I've had my own attempt at commenting and addint text to the Rudaí-document - funny how the latin dummy text spurred everybody's memory and imagination :-)

I just found out that Dropbox is coming up with a similar function in December, Dropbox Paper - a "collaborative document editing platform". But I've moved into Google Drives by then :-)

When it comes to collaboration I don't have much practical experience in cloud based tools - I usually work on my assignments alone.
Another thing is that untill recently we were not allowed to use external tools like Dropbox! The council IT department didn't allow it for security reasons, although my colleagues frequently cooporate with librarians at other libraries. Just antoher example of counter productive decisions taken in a large organisation.