Thing 20 - Google docs

I've used Google docs before when I was secretary of a rowing club. We had a Google account for the committee, which we used to store minutes of meetings and other useful information. It was also used for collaborative documents, which is really handy when the people working together aren't in the same building. People could sign up for events by adding their name to a Google doc and record their training progress using forms.


Why Google docs are great:

You can create different types of documents e.g. Word, Excel...

You can store these in Google docs so they are not taking up space on your computer

You can access them from any computer (saves carrying memory sticks around)

You can share them with your friends/colleagues, who can also edit them (yeay!)

Why Google docs are not perfect:


In word processing documents I found I didn't have control over where I could click, which meant I was unable to place the cursor where I wanted to, and couldn't highlight text I wanted. This was a bit annoying.



I shared my Cam 23 Things Google document with a colleague using her @cam email address, and we discovered that when you are sent a link to a shared document, you have to log in using the email address given in the link. If she was already logged into a Google application using her private email address then she was told she did not have access. I can see why it works this way but it could be confusing for people with multiple email addresses! The way around this would be to allow access to anyone with the link if the document isn't too confidential.


I could see Google docs perhaps being more useful for library colleagues based in different buildings working on projects together, as we tend to use shared drives for storage of collaborative documents in the UL.