17th Thing -- Online Productivity Tools -- Google Docs

I was introduced to Google Docs at a Library of Virginia workshop a couple of years ago. Although it's a great collaborative tool I hadn't used it regularly since that workshop. Now Bill and I are preparing a workshop for our Managers and Librarians. Any time you need to learn something well enough to teach it to others you invariably learn about the idiosyncrasies of the thing. Google Docs does have some but the usefulness of the product outweighs them.

Although I've created this post in Google Docs and uploaded it to my blog I'm not really sure what the advantage is in doing it this way. It seems easier to go directly to the blog and create my post there.

The ability to work in real time with others in different locations and to maintain and easily view all revisions to a document is the real benefit of Google Docs. When several people are working together on the same document it can be very useful to know who made which revisions and be able to compare versions and, if necessary, go back to an older version of a document.

I'm looking forward to having our Managers and Librarians adopt Google Docs as a useful tool for the collaborative work that we all do.