By Kate Theimer

One example of a successful Web 2.0 application is the Web site SlideShare, which is, just as it sounds, a place for people to upload and share their “slides” or presentations, or as they describe themselves on the site: “Upload and share your PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios on SlideShare. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar.” SlideShare is used by people from around the world and from all kinds of disciplines, so there’s a lot there.

SlideShare is the mostly commonly used online presentation sharing site, but these are other sources in addition to Slideshare. You might want to look at:

• SlideFinder
• Presentation2Go
• PowerPoint-Search
• FileDigg.

Tasks

1. Create an account on SlideShare, then look around for a presentation about Web 2.0 that you like. (Be aware—there are a lot of presentations with that tag! Try using the “Advanced search” feature to limit your results to only presentations in English to at least narrow the pool a bit.) You can also narrow your search by searching for presentations about archives and Web 2.0 or about libraries or museums and Web 2.0. Or try using those terms and “social media.” The goal here is for you to explore the wealth of information available on the site and see what you can learn about Web 2.0 at the same time.
2. Remember to select as “favorites” presentations that you like so that you can find them again and add your own comments and tags if you choose to. If you’re overwhelmed by the results of these searches, try searching for another topic that interests you and find something you’d like to share.
3. Upload a presentation of your own (if you have one).

Advanced Tasks

• Upload one of your own presentations to SlideShare, adding appropriate tags and metadata.
• Later, when you get to Facebook and LinkedIn, you will be able to use SlideShare to share slide presentations on those sites, if you want to.

Blog Prompts

• Write a post for your blog about your experience searching on SlideShare and share links (or embed, if you can) to the presentations you liked best—hopefully they also say something about Web 2.0 or social media too.

Resources

• Some fun archives-related presentations on SlideShare:
• “Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person” (Smithsonian)
• “Staff Expertise as Digital Strategy” (New York Public Library)
• And who can resist “Drexel University ARRRchives: A Pirate Tale“?
• SlideShare Tutorial on YouTube.
• LinkedIn’s SlideShare application video on YouTube.