Wiki, Wiki World

I hope I'm not disqualified because I maintain the Fugitive Facts wiki here at work. Clearly, I see the value of wikis in the library since I created one. The FFwiki is not as collaborative as I would like it to be but it began as a paper file so much of what we need was added at the beginning. It seems that most people give me the information to add or let me know when something needs to be added rather than doing it themselves (that's fine, it works).

I love St Joseph County's subject guides and am trying to not feel insecure because their's looks like a "real" wiki and the FFwiki doesn't. There are no rules for look and feel right? Ours does the job. Enough about my insecurities. I wonder if we did a public wiki if we (the librarians) would have the staying power to keep it going, we seem to be a project-with-an-end-type group. Alas, it seems we will not have the opportunity to try because we are doomed to wait (and wait and wait) for Sirsi's Rooms and then struggle to keep those up. Hmmm, sounding negative now. We've been waiting for rooms for years now and we could have had a wiki up and running easily by now. Ah, well.

We could certainly use something like OpenWorldCat's reviews, would help our Reader's Advisory as would GoodReads, see Allen County PL.

Technorati sucks...

Technorati, you are what the Internet was in its infancy -- the great time-sucker! Back in the day, before the graphical World Wide Web, I used a 14.4 bit modem to dial into my university's servers and spend hours lumbering through the Usenet world, amazed by who was there and what they were talking about (geek, sure, voyeristic, must have been). Then came the Web and Mosaic and I spent way too much time slowly surf the 'net. As the WWW has "matured" and search engines improved, the time spent actually surfing has been reduced dramatically (okay, maybe I also had other things to do with my time by then) so I was startled to find I had spent, well, way too much time surfing Technorati from blog to blog, headline to headline. It's a real killer -- even if you go to the business section, you still get the "rising" entertainment headlines at the bottom and who can resist "Burger King Saved Robert Downey, Jr's Life" (no wait! that was on in the business section! ack!).

I like it, a little too much. I can see using it to find blogs that might be useful to patrons -- to find books to add to my GoodReads account :) Now, I think I've spent more than enough time on this particular piece of our Web2.0 training...

The pressure to read

I'll admit it, I joined GoodReads a few months ago when I was it was mentioned by a writer I enjoy. I really joined just so I could be her "friend" and see what she reads. I entered a few things (her books, of course) and then promptly forgot about the whole thing. So, when I got to this point in Web2.0, I really looked around my GoodReads account and have been surprisingly pleased with what I found.

I have added friends (people I actually know) by surfing friend lists and have found a few interesting books on other's pages to add to my to-read shelf. Unfortunately, I don't have time to read more than a magazine article or scan the odd issue of the Willamette Week so my read shelves are a tad thin. I also have no memory for things like titles and authors which is really why this is such a useful site for me (and other like me, I know they are out there though maybe not librarians). I used to try to keep up a reading journal but I would misplace it or forget about it. And when I try to use it, it was in aphabetical order! I would end up flipping through it to find something I had added years before. This web version is at home, at work, always right where I left it and because I can put any given title on multiple subject "shelves" I should be able to find that book I can't remember the name of at the moment.

And I like that I can search the existing shelves of other GoodReaders, but (here comes the librarian in me) I have the same problem that I always have with tagging, what did the others choose for a tag? In scanning the "Top Shelves" I find: childrens, young-adult, children, youngadult, childrensbooks, ya, kids, picture-books, childrens-books, children-s-books, teen, children-s, and picturesbooks. This makes finding all the picture books or books for children or for teens cumbersome at least. If I search for young_adult, I get a lovely list but there is nothing to suggest that I also try young-adult, youngadult, ya and teen as well. Just my issue with social-tagging, it's useful but has its problems.

Now if my kids would just get a little older, I might find some time to read the titles on my to-read shelf!

del.icio.us.ly easy

We've been using del.icio.us as a group in IS for quite some time now and I use it personally. I have to admit that although I do occasionally tag things for the IS account, I rarely use it and only then if I remember that I tagged site earlier -- I don't look to see if anyone else has added something that might be useful to what I am doing at the moment. "Doing at the moment" ... maybe that's it. I can see using it with co-workers if we had a singular mission (if we were a bunch of teachers or forensic scientists or environmentalists) and we were tagging things work-related, but we have an entire universe of topics that may come across our desks and the thought that the few of us might have tagged just the site I need to answer a particular question just doesn't occur to me. Also, the randomness of the tags always leaves me feeling that I might just be missing the right one -- what did they call it and how was it spelled?

I have found some good sites by surfing other users' tagged sites but found even single users are inconsistant in their tagging. Using children and kids for seemingly the same types of sites does not group the sites for the future -- one needs to remember what one used as a tag last time to make it useful. Merged words and underscores further muddy the puddle. It makes me yearn for some standards, some rules, some list of agreed upon tags ... oh, there I go, thinking like a librarian.

I am bored (or boring?)

So, I haven't found anything to love so far. I am bored by MySpace but maybe that's because I am boring -- I don't care to surf other people's sites and don't know many people with accounts and really, would rather email or call them if I want to contact them. Does that make me boring? Old? Of a previous generation? Or just busy? Not sure, maybe all. I do think it or something like it has potential for library use. I don't buy the arguement that kids don't like to see things like libraries on "their" turf. As the users age (that is, grow up) and new users find us already there, this will become an increasingly moot point and the expection will be that we (and everyone/thing is there). I helped a grandma find her military grandson's page that other day, so yay for this project!

Meebo might catch my fancy if I had friends who used it but we all have gmail accounts and chat there. I can see the value of using it in the library and teaching patrons to use it.

I have discarded Bloglines entirely and have gone back to my Pageflakes ways. Use it everyday.

I think it is valuable to be familiar with 2.0 trends and to have time to try them out. I'd like to see this be an ongoing program with, maybe, one new site/program/trend every month so once everyone has gone through this initial ramp-up.

MySpace is all about me -- me, Me ME!

As my brother-in-law said after accepting me as a MySpace friend: "Welcome to the (slightly embarrassing) world of Myspace." It seems so "contemplating your navel" and "Here's my navel, look, look!" and then "Oh, yeah? Here's MY navel! And the navels of all my "friends" as well!

Okay, that's overboard. It does seem like a good way to keep in touch with lots of people. I found my husband's far-flung cousins all reading each other's blogs and replying as if they were all in conversation with each other. I surfed from one cousin to the next through their friends lists which was nice because they all use psuedonyms and I won't have found them otherwise. I know this is how my brother-in-law keeps up with his friends all over the country.

So, the library has lots to say to lots of people. People who might want to be able to "converse" in a way. And the library showing off its navel may be just the thing to get a younger demographic
interested. Or maybe just being in their vision might be helpful.

Some library sites that have nice applications:

• One library MySpace site I particularly like is Alameda County Library. They even have a way to search their catalog from MySpace! Cool!

• The Brooklyn Public Library RIF site has a nice display of book cover which appears to be connected to its Frazy account.

• Pawtucket is using the calender feature.

• ALA uses their Interests section well, with changing their interests regularly and embedding images and video.

• Florida's AskALibrarian service embedded their chat box.

Meebo Mistake

So, I carefully followed the instructions for adding a meebo chat box to my blog but, alas, they were the wrong instructions. Holly clearly asks us to make widgets whereas I made a full-on room. The room is fun, the room is cool, the room has uses but I do think the simple widget would be easier for library use since each new user opens a new chat box and cannot see or participate in the other chats going on at the same time. And the logged conversations would be quite a problem :)

Am trying the Firefox extention by meebo to see how easy it might be to use in "real-life."