Thing #18 - now this we can use!

Online productivity... kind of like having a hard drive online - although not exactly, though there are companies who will store data digitally (another intriguing idea if privacy and security were guaranteed). The potential for joint project and writing assignments is very cool - this could potentially speed up some things - group work is notoriously difficult, but being able to share files in real-time would be a bonus. I like the idea of a program tracking editions like a wikipedia entry. Pretty neat.

Playing in the Sandbox #17

The sandbox wiki is nifty. I checked out My Recent Good Reads, What I am Reading, 23 of mahjchick's favorite romance writers, and many of the random travel and favorite things sites that folks had created. Kudos to everyone who has discovered how to create a blog.

I'm going to skip the doing part of this exercise as I have already created a wiki. I question too whether creating a list of my favorite things is really a good subject for a wiki. How will people contribute to my favorite things--they don't know me, though I suppose they could add ideas of what else might appeal to me. Though that might be helpful to me, it doesn't really add to the common knowledge or promote wider community involvement.

I have two wiki ideas that I want to persue here at my library. A community wiki and a reader's advisory wiki. I also really like the idea of making our adult summer reading group into a wiki (though that might not be quite the right technology). Re. the community wiki, the local newspaper does a wonderful community guide each fall that would make a perfect base for a wiki: churches, clubs, restaurants, parks, recreation, culture, etc... I'm not sure how they will feel about copyright issues but we shall see!

Wild and Wonderful World of Wikis

I've created one unsuccessful wiki and have plans for another which I hope will be more useful... The dud was a PB wiki that I built for a group of homeschoolers for whom I was doing an Internet class. My grand idea was that they would continue to use the wiki to add sites that they discovered etc... "If you build it they will come" but you still have to provide valuable enough content to make the trip worth the bother. Lesson learned. In my defense (perceived failure makes me feel defensive I suppose) I really just wanted to play with the concept and had just learned about PB Wiki from a colleague who'd gone to the 2005 Computers in Libraries conference.

My latest brainstorm is that a wiki would be a good place to keep our reader's advisory book lists. Several of us here at the library are working on a series of bookmarks and reading lists and a wiki would be a nice way of storing our collective project while also allowing our patrons to get in on the fun. Still in its nascent stages... we'll see how well this one goes.

Ideas that impressed me from this lesson's explorations:

The St Joseph's Public Library's in Indiana has subject guides that are pretty fabulous - great that they integrate catalog selections with their subjects http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

The Princeton Book Lovers wiki is a great idea - we just finished a summer reading club for adults and I should have been doing this! Folks wrote all sorts of good reviews that need a viewing space. A good fall project? Definitely an idea to be implemented next summer...

And of course the Library Success: Best Practice wiki is terrific, it comes to light all over the place and is one of my del.icio.us bookmarks.

#15 Library 2.0 where are we going?

The language of library 2.0 has been around for long enough and I've read enough journal articles and attended enough meetings and conferences to leave me with a (slightly fuzzy around the edges) impression of library 2.0 It seems to involve, comfortable, cozy library spaces (library as 3rd place), with study space, meeting and greeting space, ample access to technology, and a generous online presence to insure that the library is open 24/7 --at least to community members who are connected to the web. What library 2.0 does for those on the other side of the digital divide is still classic library 1.0 service: teaching technology classes, providing free computer access, and doing good old fashioned collection development to provide materials to those who can't or won't venture into the electronic collection.

While I buy into the theory that libraries have always been innovative and therefore library 2.0 is not a drastic departure from business as usual, this is a different era simply because technology is moving so quickly. Using a product like camtasia to create online computer tutorials seems like a very wise investment of time and energy. Teaching computer skills to non-users is a vital part of libraries roles in bridging the digital divide. Creating a myspace account for the library is not absolutely required, but many libraries are finding a niche in the social network of their neighborhood teens. Other libraries are finding that they are connected to YA authors and other YA librarians--a useful connection, but not necessarily the initial goal when the account was created.

Ah, so much to say and think about. However, since the debate will continue well into Library 4.0 we'll just keep cranking along trying new things--keeping the good stuff and ditching the not-so-applicable ideas.

#14 Technorati

How tags work... what do you know, tagging is just like cataloging--the more tags, the easier the object is to find! I read someone's post (sorry I didn't save the link) who is a school library person and he/she (?) was musing about the possibilities for having students tag a reading. Instead of the classic question "what is the main idea," students would share their tags and the teacher would be able to see what the kids were picking up. (pardon the dangling preposition) It's an interesting idea--the cumulative tags would let the instructor know if the lesson had sunk in and if the students were comprehending. I suspect that this is just a new label for a process that teachers have employed before, but technology does allow tag clouds to create a visual representation of ideas (but again, this has been done with construction paper and yarn for years) which can be super useful for visual learners.

Technorati is a great search engine for the blogosphere and I did encounter some very interesting sites. The top_____ sites are interesting to check in with from time to time if only to know what is going on in the bigger pop culture world.

P.S. Yippee for advanced Search options!

Lucky #13

Del.icio.us provides an interesting service for organizing bookmarks that can be accessible from anywhere online. This alone is a great service for those of us who have bookmarks in Firefox and Explorer and work on three different desks depending on the day. I am not disciplined enough to have exported and installed all of my bookmarks on the two reference desk computers as well as my office computer... but del.icio.us might be new and interesting enough to get me there!

It is even more useful (I suspect) as a citation searching tool of sorts for intrepid explorers. Much like writing a research paper or working on an annotated bibliography--after a while the same authors start to pop up. This lets you know that you are starting to get a good grasp on your topic as well as giving you new avenues and authors to research further. The tagging aspect of social bookmarking allows this same functionality. We can track other libraries or individuals who are interested in the same ideas that we are, and learn about new technologies or unknown web domains from our explorations.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'll have to spend a bit more time with this to know how useful it can really be, but the idea is certainly interesting.

August 11 - I'm sold I think. As I encounter more great ideas and programing tips in the wiki section of thing 16, I'm bookmarking like mad and realizing that once I bookmark in my browser, I seldom revisit or remember why I thought a site was so grand. Del.icio.us to the rescue...now I just have to keep using it and making good tags!