Wikis

On the Learning 2.0 front this week, I spent about an hour and a half learning about and exploring wikis. I had forgotten that I already had some experience at least reading a wiki: C'YAAL has a wiki and I also perused the one the ALA had up for the 2007 Annual Conference that I attended. I recently edited or added a couple of entries to the C'YAAL wiki.
The wikis on the Learning 2.0 site that I explored and found interesting were: SJCPL Subject Guides. I really liked how this was organized. It seemed easy to navigate and I think the language is easier for patrons to understand. I loved the Book Lovers Wiki and found it similar to JCPL's teen page book reviews. I think having the picture of the book covers really jazzed it up. I also liked that it was divided by subject somewhat. It made it easier to find the types of reviews I was most interested in. Library Success: a Best Practices Wiki seemed overwhelming at first, but then I looked under "services for specific groups" and choose "teens". I perused the wikis, blogs and MySpace pages. I was impressed with ALD's MySpace page. I decided not to look at the ALA 2006 wiki since I had used the 2007 ALA wiki prior to attending the conference. Now that I know more about wikis, I would have loved to have had a laptop with wifi at the conference to keep up on the constant changes that were happening while I was there. I noticed immediately that the Bull Run Library wiki wasn't sponsored or associated with the library system. I wonder why? It was interesting and I got a big kick out of the link to the "uncyclopedia" definition of a librarian.
Applications in a library that I think a wiki would work well for: keeping track of what is happening in YASC. Since we meet only a few times a year, I think we could interact more using a wiki. I'm really liking the one we have for C'YAAL, so I think it is great for collaborating. Maybe Nikki and I can use it with the school media specialists. I think we should get book reviews on our website like SJCPL did. I think our patrons would like it a lot. Think of it as an online interactive book display. I can't think of anything else right now - lunch time!

Comments about Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

I like what Michael Stephens mentioned in his article, entitled "Into a New World of Librarianship" that Librarian 2.0 makes good, fast decisions. It would be helpful if JCPL would adopt that philosophy. I think patrons expect it as they expect us to plan our services with them in mind. I also liked what Dr. Wendy Schultz says in her article, "To a temporary Place in time": "Libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities." Again, I feel that patrons expect the library to REALLY be part of the community and would give the library more support if we proved that we are.
I missed the author, but the article entitled, "11 Reasons Why Library 2.0 Exists and Matters" has a great quote: ...the basic drive is to get people back into the lbirary by making the library relevant to what they want and need in their daily lives...to make the library a destination and not an afterthought." I can't remember how man times patrons have come to the library to ask for a book or video. Initially, they checked a video store or book store, then remembered the library. The library should be their first thought.

Technorati

Today, I tried to learn what Technorati is good for. The video tutorial wouldn't load. Perhaps our bandwith was all taken up. I read the FAQs instead.
I did a search on Learning 2.0 three times: once with "tags" added; once with "blogposts" added and once with "blog directory" added to the search terms. The tags seemed to get me the most irrelevant information. Blogposts was much more specific - I only got three results and they were the most specific to my search terms. The first few results using "blog directory" were relevant, the rest weren't relevant.

Del.icio.us

I have toyed a bit with Del.icio.us today. I can't say I like the layout nor do I find it that user-friendly. I did manage to add a couple tags of my own. I noticed someone had added a site that dealt with historic precipitation data and remembered patrons asking for this type of information from time to time. So, I thought I would add a couple of weather-related sites I have found useful.
The tags that people choose seem pretty general, but can be personal to their own thought pattersns. I can see it somewhat as a research tool, especially for putting all the best Reader's Advisory tools in one place. Or, it is an easy way to access bookmarks you have created from any where you happen to be.

Play Week

The past few days I have messed around with an image generator, note my cute little avatar I added to my blog. It wasn't easy, I tell you. I did like Library Thing and have cataloged a half dozen books so far. I set up a Rollyo account for searching for "used books" on the web. Frankly, I don't see that I would use this tool. Even the examples I looked at had the same web site listed over and over again. I can get that searching Google.