using the wikis

Adding my blog to the two wikis was simple. The only thing I found to require much thought at all was using the edit link option to create a name separate from the url. Knowing that wikis are so easy to use gives me more of an idea of why they have become so popular.

wiki overview

The library wikis listed provided several good ideas of how to use wikis. After looking at the wiki Library Chick I thought that wikis can be used effectively for continuing educational. The wiki Library Success A Best Practices Wiki proved that wikis are an effective tool for librarians to learn more about specific sites and the library profession. The SJCPL Subject Guides has several subject guides and shows that collaboration through wikis can provide great resources. I would think that these would be particularly helpful since electronic resources can change frequently.

The other wikis made me realize other great ideas as well. The Book Lover's Wiki shows how patrons can become involved in the process while the Bull Run Library wiki shows how several departments or even Friends of the Library can use a common outlet. Finally, I did not expect to find the ALA Conference wiki very interesting but it may have been the wiki that called for this format the strongest. Many people may have different incites (in this case some people may have particular experiences in New Orleans) that would make a collaborative tool very useful.

The one question I would have is how much resistance other libraries found from either IT departments or from upper administration since wikis, or other web 2.0 tools for that matter, would not likely follow any web design guidelines for an organization. Has it been to much for organizations to run an public site without the generally followed header, footer, font, or other format rules of the standard website?

Rollyo

I still have to use this tool more to decide if I find it useful. However, I did like how easy it was to set up and the idea of creating a search engine that is subject specific is appealing. To create a personalized search engine I rolled together Broward County Libraries and Nova University's library websites. Although a search for Ask A Librarian pulled up Broward County first all of the following entries on the page were from Nova.

Select...searchSearch The Web

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a tool that can seriously distract you for some time. I found the information for Reader's Advisory helpful and enjoyed perusing some of the groups. I found that it was really easy to set up an account and to begin filling up a library. The only problem I had was that it can be particular about the titles. While trying to add an entry to my library I tried typing in the title "Organic Inc" but it did not work until I added the period at the end of Inc. Only the slightest of blemishes on a very fun and useful website.

Online Image Generator

I found these tool's east to use than I thought it would be. I particularly like the card catalog John Blyberg’s Card Catalog Generator, which probably no surprise being a librarian. I think this generator would be good for marketing purposes.

I found the other generators were also easy to use and enjoyable to use. The for dummies mock ups is just a fun tool to use and its uses could also be enjoyable, although I can't think of any now.

Web 2.0 ideas

OCLC's articles had some every interesting ideas. One of the ideas I found interesting came from the article, "To Better Bibliographic Services", John J. Riemer states that we should use better relevance ranks by bringing in such information as circulation activity or sales data. I think this is a very good idea to bring more variables into our relevance rankings as long as we can still create individual search by such categories as subjects.

I also found two interesting ideas in the article, "Into a New World of Librarianship", by Michael Stephens. One was the idea that libraries could be more transparent in its decision making. Obviously we cannot be all things to all people but letting patrons see where we are headed and receiving their input could possible give libraries a better reputation and better functionality.

I like what the tools and ideas of Web 2.0 can produce but I also liked to here Mr. Stephens statements against "technolust". I think it can be easy for anyone interested in technology to want to try anything new regardless of how our patron's would actually use it. I think there is the challenge, to embrace these uses of technology and understand where they can used most effectively.

Labels

I have to admit this was an exercise I made much harder than it needed to be. This was one of those instances where what you try the first time does not work so you jump straight to more illogical solutions. One problem I had is figuring out the vocabulary, such as Blogger using the term labels instead of tags. However, after about thirty minutes of frustration I found that it was actually really easy to set up and add labels. Since this blog is in the early stages I don't know if the labels (or tags) have much in the way of usefulness but I could see these being useful as blog continues to grow.

looking ahead

With the opportunity to write about anything technology related I would like to look ahead to online tools. I am looking forward to this session because I like the portability of working with online documents. I have used Writely (which is now part of Google Documents) for some time now. I began when I was still in school. I was a bit concerned about my work being lost but I never ran into any problems. Of course you can use a usb drive but with my memory it was nice to be able to leave the house without having the possibility of forgetting something. Whether using my lunch break or going out of town it was a great help to know I did not need to bring anything to continuously work on a paper.

Del.icio.us

I heard about this site some time ago but I never followed through with finding out more about it. Using Del.icio.us paid off almost immediately. By exploring Del.icio.us's search function I found the wiki Librarian Chick. This site had good links to other helpful sites, many of them Web 2.0 applications. The application of making your bookmarks portable by using this web based service was the second service I found very useful. This can be particularly useful when doing job rotations.

Flickr

We have the opportunity to talk about anything to do with technology but I think I will stick with what we have covered this week, flickr. An area that I think I fall far behind on is using digital cameras and digital images. I knew of Flickr but it did open some new ideas to me. Particularly, I was interested in the mash ups. I thought the use of the Mappr and Trip Planner features sounded very attractive for sharing images and experiences from a trip. I also think the blogging feature is an interesting tool to create a coversation about interest or experiences. I feel a little bit better about my knowledge of how we can use digital images and I realize that in a short time I have found out there is much to explore.