Google Docs

 I think what could turn out to be the most useful aspect of Google Docs for me is the ability to save files to it which I can then access both at work and at home, without any need to email them to myself or carry a flash drive around. When it comes to sharing files within our library, we already have a networked drive which we use for this purpose. There is also a College wide drive for sharing files with other departments. It is true that these drives are only available from computers linked to our admin network, so they can't be accessed from home or be used for sharing files with anyone outside the College, but attaching them to emails works fine in most cases - we don't often need to work collaboratively on files with external people. However, there are some circumstances in which sharing files via Google Docs may come in handy - Gareth has already suggested that we could use it when working with Pembroke College to prepare for our annual PKP summer school programme - and I can see that we might also be able to use it when working with external individuals involved in developing, managing and publicising our library's Global Warming Collection . We could also add a form to our website allowing anyone to recommend books for the collection. Our library catalogue already incorporates a form allowing students to request books for their courses, so it is not necessary to create one for that purpose.

Wordle image

Thinking about the Global Warming Collection, I then produced a simple flyer promoting the collection, which I have made accessible to anyone with the link. I did find some aspects of the formatting of document files a bit difficult to get the hang of at first. The layout looks very much like Word, but it doesn't seem to operate like Word in all respects - for example, when I inserted the picture I found that couldn't move it around on the page very easily, and I had trouble centering the text on the page. However, other features of Google Docs, such as importing files and changing the access settings, are very simple to use.
I also had a look at the various document templates shared by other users, and although there is a lot of rubbish available, I did come across one or two useful ones, including quite a nice recipe template:

Master my recipe template by Nr13730

Using some of these templates could save time when creating particular types of document.