My first thought when I saw iGoogle was "what's the point?" Why do you need an aggregator when you can just go to the web site you want first? Normally I have facebook, twitter, hotmail and any other website I'm using, open on different tabs in Internet Explorer - hopping between each tab, a bit like Channel hopping on TV. I felt seeing all the different things on one page may be a bit too much all at once. The best part for me was the customization ability to have an "Indiana Jones" themed banner!
However after a couple of weeks of having an iGoogle page, I'm starting to change my mind. I find I use it a lot for catching up, rather than as a launch point for the different library resources I have on a separate tab.
I still think it has limitations in its functionality. Similar to using a general search across different databases, there's more functionality when using each site on its own. However that said, I do quite like being able to see what's happening at one time.
In terms of students, I can see this may be useful for MA and PhD students, as a good current awareness tool, when they need to keep up to date. Being able to have all the RSS feeds and information on one screen, aids information retrieval and saves time searching for information when set up correctly. I'm certainly going to think about adding this into skills training for Masters students as a means of keeping up to date along with zetoc and other alerting services.
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