Thing 16- Wikis

Interesting things about wikis?: a wide audience can be reached- beyond the scope of what an organizer might imagine, and input can come from both expected and unexpected sources. For the library world all of the applications I sampled are exciting: pathfinders, book reviews, best practices, editing articles, conference information.
I particularly liked the Library Success: a best practices Wiki- I'm one who prefers control, so I noticed this site had put up a number of links to make it transparent to me- There was a list of users, and an easy-to-find link to recent changes. It also had an RSS feed, which is a great way to keep up professionally in a specific area of interest and to share one's own experience along the way. I noticed particularly the links in the category Looking for a job: a huge concern in this era of budget cuts and layoffs. I thought the conferences wiki a good idea for a specific event. I also looked at Merlin's links and found there is a link to Montgomery County's Shhout out as well as good links to wiki software. The ability for library users to add book review information a la Amazon.com is exciting- especially as we librarians are becoming more time-limited: as long as there is adequate control to monitor for inappropriate comments. The possibility of collaborative editing of documents is also compelling, especially with the budget downturn, although the primary utility would be to confine it to in-house collaboration. At the administrative level , however, a wiki which would allow a library system to merge it's information with other systems might have some collaborative advantage. I guess Merlin could be a site for that. The use of wikis for pathfinders leaves me a bit ambivalent, as I am with wikipedia- the potential is there for a lot of great information to be added, but the policing of accuracy is vitally important in the library field and not to be jeopardized or we lose our credibility. The pathfinder site I looked at required users to register- I don't know to what extent that helps with content integrity. I guess one can connect wikis to social networking sites also, which should increase their visibility.
This seems like an application that will keep growing and adapting.

Thing 15- Library 2.0

Two observations to start out- The same few names seemed to be linked to most of the articles, and I noticed the Technorati tags at the bottom of some of the blogs, which I would not have noticed or paid attention to before Thing 14. I understand Library 2.0 to be about making the library relevant in the current cyberspace environment, particularly the millenials- meaning making library space, real and virtual, more interactive and collaborative, driven by user needs and recognizing that the IT needs to make this happen will make that piece of the public library world more influential than just tech support. I liked the concept of icebergs being the things that get in the way of achieving these goals. I feel that our library system has made great strides in adopting the goals of Librarian 2.0: being more user-centered, changing the culture of the institution to respect and embrace Web 2.0 offerings- becoming a trend spotter. I was particularly struck by the urging that library users should be able to use library resources to do their own mash-ups and remixes of information garnered from our in-person and virtual services. I think an under-appreciated part of changing our in-house culture, however, comes from the the realities we are now facing from severe budget challenges. We have users who are more and more expecting the types of services offered through a library 2.0 perspective, but who have no notion of the costs needed to achieve this transformation-- these same users who take for granted a lot of free information on the web, who have no notion that all this content came from somewhere and got there somehow, with no notion of costs attached or any idea that privacy, authoritative accuracy, rights of authors or artists or newspapers as content providers play any role. The various articles mention the role of libarians in removing barriers to the public in accessing the various content available, but I wonder if part of our role also is to educate people that it's not all about entitlement to information, that there is also some responsibility that goes along with its use (like acknowledging the rights of others in the above-mentioned areas)-
Every exciting opportunity comes with corresponding responsibility, and I ponder what role the library community has in making this connection. My husband and I were both entranced with the Library 4.0 vision of the library as Knowledge spa- we hope that is part of our retirement experience of the library.

Things 14: Technorati

I tried looking at technorati in January and found it was so so slow I couldn't really get around it- turns out they were doing some redesign- so when I tried again this week, it worked just fine- The link for the tour, though, is gone, like in thing 13- so I just took a look around technorati.com I looked at the Directory of blogs by topic, clicking on a few to see what the top sites listed are, I also looked at the popular tags, clicking on some of those to see what blogs came up- Also noted that it is possible to search by blogger, is one knows of a blogger one wants to follow. If I were a blogger, registering on this site would be a useful way for others to keep tabs on what I am doing- If I wanted others to see the tags on my posts from blogspot, if I wanted to share with others doing Learning 2.0 in other organizations, coding my tags would be way for me to share across organizational boundaries. As with the social networking sites, however, I am not up for that. I am having a challenge just keeping up with my colleagues doing 23 things. Again, however, it is good to know that this opportunity exists.

Things #13 Tagging and discover del.icio.us

None of the links for the tutorials for Delicous work anymore unfortunately, so I went to delicious.com and took a long look at the web site- I learned that it is a social bookmarking site, which uses tagging like in Flickr and LibraryThing to categorize links among users- I looked at Fresh (what's new) and the list of Popular bookmarks, following a few of them to see what other people have bookmarked and looked at (there was a good one for making potato chips in the microwave) and how they have tagged their entries. I did a search for a tag of personal interest, Old Mission Peninsula, where I go in the summer- there were 13 entries- posted by real estate agents, bed and breakfast, a topo map for a state park on a sea kayaking webstie, a bicycle tour map and various wineries on the peninsula. the idea of having one site for saving all my bookmarks is an attractive one, and the social aspect of tagging being used to share links with others provides some very interesting searching, as well as the opportunity to interact about the various tags of interest. I m not, however, into social networking, so I decided that once I understood how the site functions that I will not join at this time. I am glad to know that it is there.

Things 12: Roll your own search tool with Rollyo

The idea behind Rollyo is intriguing and theoretically it could be fun a tool to use-
to create a searchroll tailored to your specific area of interest from sites you have chosen; but I found the site to be very slow and sometimes difficult to sign onto because there were too many users. I created a Searchroll to scan real estate for sale in areas where we are thinking we might like to retire- But the URLS can only be the top of the domain, meaning it isn't possible just to zoom in on real estate sections of newspapers- and I couldn't figure out how to eliminate the whole web from the targeted search for my searchroll, so the results had a lot of stuff I didn't want, and it was probably just as quick to go to the several sites on my roll individually. It doesn't negate the idea, but if wasn't doing specifically what I needed it to do, and it wasn't clear to me how to make it as specific as I wanted it. I might go back from time-to-time to look in on it, but it didn't impress me as something that will become part of my permanent portfolio.

The link to my dashboard is http://www.rollyo.com/index.html- my searchroll being VT and MI property

Thing 11- Library Thing

I remember this site from a previous training- although I never kept it up, so I've started again with a new account. I set up an account and added the most recent eight books I've read. I've already had some reader recommendations. I have not added an reviews, which is something to consider for future visits. I also like the local events listings for authors visits and the Library Thing recommedations for titles like the ones I've listed. When I'm done with this trainig, I hope to have more time to spend on this site.
http://www.librarything.com/home/RhodaBush

Thing 10- Online image generator

href="http://avatars.yahoo.com/" target="_blank">

Yahoo- I figured out how to upload my avatar from yahoo-used the copy code and edit HTML route- That's my major accomplishment for this exercise- I used yahoo because I already have an account there, and I didn't want to open yet another account somewhere else. I also looked at FD toys on Flickr, because I opened an account there, too. I could see where one could have fun with this, but as I am not very artsy (too literal), I would need lots of time without interruption to find my inner avatar and figure out how to generate it. Now that I have some kind of avatar, I should probably consider going back and adding it some of my other profiles opened previously. That's a note for future reference. For right now, onward-