Wiki Sandbox – now that’s creative; the concept of creating a website that is easy enough for anyone to use for trial & error plus at no cost is ideal. Great to be able to experiment & understand how the wiki works – plus they remind you ; Don't complain if your work is deleted. It's going to happen sooner or later. How novel! Wetpaint is a super name for this type of exercise ; it makes you think of fun, active, colourful things …. “click and type” – sounds too good to be true. I did find it easy to use & interesting to work around. I can see it would be useful for discussion groups; simple enough for the local hobby club or young mothers perhaps to use, sharing tips and experiences. A great look, a great addition to the website scene. Easy Free Fun !

Wikis

I enjoy using wikipedia but have never gone further to edit or add my own link. On the face of it, it seems to be very user friendly. In providing a platform for those who actually know something about a subject to share that knowledge in an open format (knowledge is there to be shared:- “It is knowledge that influences and equalizes the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.” Benjamin Disraeli ), to invite other considerations which in turn strengthens the wiki and it’s ability to grow after every addition – it is reaching out to the global community in a resourceful way and in a positive way, providing an arena for the contributions of it’s community – it’s a 2-way street. It seems to also provide helpful explanations & advice (using links) in helping those with specific issues eg health, travel; where a page can be opened sometimes only to invite input by other knowledgeable users.

I thought the ‘best practices wiki’ was great ; some excellent suggestions from libraries all over for other librarians to take advantage of – interesting to read; “the more print there is in a community the higher the literacy level, and the more success there is in school.” Now that is worthwhile seeing in print! I am also impressed by Chad Boeninger’s BizWiki – can see our NZ collection having it’s own ‘nzwiki’ & doing something similar for directing users. Ideas for applications within libraries as a specific group could include a Wiki for co-ordinating Library Heritage Week – in the first instance to help organize the events including input from branch libraries with links to sponsors and what each library is planning to do. Its possible a wiki could be useful in promoting services for children where the library supports a holiday or reading programme, encouraging advice from children’s authors and contributions for best liked / disliked books or activities. There would be many uses – and probably the more you did use it, the more reasons you would find.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” – Benjamin Franklin

Web 2.0 / Library 2.0

“We are teaching the machine” / “We are the machine / “We are the web” - I suppose the next thing is “We are all there is” Web 2 has overtaken us so well – are there limits? Is there a wall out there somewhere we are shooting towards. Do the poor in Afganistan also understand the world as a close knit global unit – as you only need a ‘machine’ to join in.
Icebergs
“All are remnants of a bygone information age, practices and attitudes that no longer make sense but which we have difficulty letting go” Really ? No longer make sense ? I don’t think that is entirely true – the essentials of librarianship are still there – restrictive attitudes & modus operandi have changed, but the librarian of today is also a product of her age & these things do not nec apply. Of course, it’s normal to upgrade practices (the effects of too much too soon is questionable), but leaning too far into this space might also isolate us beyond our patrons. Attitudes – well, we have always focused on sharing knowledge & encouraging our patrons to take part along the way; we have always been library 2.0 active in my view.

I don’t think we are kidding ourselves wanting to keep a ‘print’ collection & being a public library, essentially something on most subjects. We have schooled our public to have far-reaching & imaginative minds – we will be pushing them away if libraries can’t / don’t offer any other options than what they can find themselves online. As always, we need to provide for ‘all’ our customers ie all aspects of our society. Plus we can’t assume that the new generation will feel the same (I guess they will look after themselves), however it is probably not possible to have a reasonable selection of all resource media - so indeed where do we go from here - I suppose at least ‘reading’ will still be a requirement?
Does it meet the users need in an improved way? – “exactly”

At least 'these' statements still apply: ‘integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play’; ‘promote community memories’ ; ‘library is everywhere, barrier-free, and participatory’ (wonderful).

Transition to Library 3.0: the 3D service
Are we in danger of becoming a ‘device’ on screen that politely directs those who visit us online into cyberspace realms & virtual reality libraries – where you step into an illusionary informational directive space created to make your library experience entertaining & rewarding. I can see libraries could be in such a sphere – where the personal touch is but imagined.

Libraries have a terribly important role, one which increases in difficulty as technical advancements are made ; keeping a level that is accessible but also in a superior place. I see us looking on the face of it, just like an ordinary library of the past, however once entered inside, the services offered are levels upon levels ; a visitor will simply step into their level.

Tread Carefully Ahead …. we know not what is upon us.
(think I’ve said too much again..)

Technorati

On the whole, an interesting site. Looks quite easy to find general subjects – but you need time to browse a few sites before finding the thing you really want & not getting side tracked along the way (not keen on advertising trying to grab my eye all the time – puts me off). As with most searching, it seems you need the quotation marks to identify words in a string but using ‘and’ between words seems to work too – best to look for straight-forwarded subjects, but would like to try something obscure just to test these tags/and groups of. Found 539 tags for Learning 2.0 ; 733 blog references and 2007 blog post references. Looks like the posts & tags seem to be listed in most recent, but not sure how the blogs are listed, maybe it’s deemed most relevant. Probably the tags would be the more specific application.
Found a blog ‘librarian for a day’ ; she is really on the technology role ; sounds like a blog I would like to revisit, just to see what is going on in her world.
If you search ‘inside a blog’ it will give you the different posts with that topic – pretty good really searchwise.
I’m finding a lot of librarians blogsites, it’s really encouraging.
What I’ve realised is that people really group together – weirdo techno fans, celebrity gossip fans, science gadget fans, etc Seems to me that those that blog out there, do so in order to find others like themselves – belonging together in a global cluster – and there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, I think you would also have to be careful as well – very easy to post your ideas forgetting the consequences on a worldwide scale.
Lists Top Movies (incl latest Harry Potter); Top News; Top Videos – this shows you exactly what type of things interest people ; gosh if you are researching human behaviour – this is the place to go.

Del.icio.us

This looks like a great tool & has proved to be of use in other libraries – wonder if we could use this to tag our reference queries - websites we find useful for news items and sites for students eg NZ history, American civil rights, etc. We could add some subject tags & define the pages – I guess in a similar way we use the fitch for items on & off the catalogue. Bundling tags by general subject or school year might also be workable. Wondered a bit about the privacy thing – but if it’s really just websites that are on display, I guess it doesn’t matter. It also might seem more efficient for staff if our regular & useful sites were recorded this way – easier perhaps if moving from one pc to another (& in case of pc breakdown) eg geneology, local history. I see we have a link on our webpage for the public to access del.icio.us ; wonder how many have registered. I thought the tags could be improved on some of the sites – found a good cooking/recipe site under Del.icio.usIdeas; looks useful & well used. But the thing is to pick & choose from these web tools, so we use the ones most suited & best defined for working in libraries ; wonder what else there is out there ...

Discovery Exercise #7.2

Looking through bloglines feeds via subject was a reasonable experience – easy to use & filled with all sorts of links. I liked using google news (will perhaps use this more for work). Found it strange being able to feed to blog comments & subscribe (atom) to other people’s blogs (the whole non-privacy thing feels unnatural to me) – subject searching worked fine, except when unfortunately, some blog comments seemed to get off the subject track somewhat & you found you were looking at ‘all manner of things‘ along the way!
I found that doing a search for feeds or blogs inside a site was useful, as it took you straight to their selection & some even had links to take you further.
I also came across ‘newsonfeeds.com’ which provided an extensive list of aggregators for searching (incl the ones mentioned above). As with all things on the web though, it is wise to be prudent when searching unknown sites ; I‘ll keep searching over the next few days & see if something even better turns up.

It is most likely that I will end up checking the regular websites I use from now on, just to see if the pages I’m on have update feeds available – purely for interest sake of course!

Discovery Exercise #7.1

Well ! - what else will we be doing in a few year's time. There’s so much information out there, someone had to think of limiting the amounts somehow - it takes time to wade through it all on a regular basis. To begin with I dreaded the thought of being on the receiving end of more information – I mean I’ve already got email to sift through - lots to look at, lots to read & lots of ‘other stuff’ happening. I can understand how good this process is though & appreciate how it works & would save time & money, esp if you have only a few minutes to log on & check for updates on several sites. Having selected some news item feeds earlier in the week, I can now read my ‘personal’ news files – I guess that feels pretty good. However, if you don’t manage your files, you can probably end up with limitless numbers of incoming mail. I may still want to check the original site & see what else is going on, but would do so feeling more confident having already read any important bits. But yes, it is a good tool. Perhaps I’ll even start to use it more often over the next few weeks ; will see.
Good to see the library feeds ; I’ve subscribed to the new titles & what’s on : I guess in the future, latest books from specific authors or particular subjects will be feedable ; couldn’t see much to subscribe to on the Paperplus site or Whitcoulls. Maybe the libraries are way ahead on this one.
Subscribing to topics in the Herald works well, as you can identify section/topic/category etc but still seems to me that you will get stuff you don’t want – doesn’t look like you can completely get away from all of that. Can see how it would be good for those looking for jobs – employment / librarian – it all comes to you.
Must be a feed here somewhere for Lianza, but I can’t find it!

(Clip Art as info like music flows on ..)