Those Darn Cats!

Wikis Here, There, and Everywhere

I have really enjoyed this lesson about wikis and have learned a lot. For one thing I didn't realize that the term, wiki, originated in Hawaii. When I lived overseas, we used to take the wiki bus around the compound where we lived. It went fairly fast and beat walking most of the time. It was kind of interesting to make this small connection...but I digress.

I loved the BookLovers wiki from Princeton. It is a very dynamic way to share what's hot in reading and I got some ideas for my personal reading list. I was wondering what the purpose was for providing raffle prizes to the reviewers. If that was the only way to keep the wiki going and dynamic, maybe it is not such a useful tool. I can see participating in a wiki like BookLovers and encouraging our customers and staff to do so...it would help build a sense of community. I also like the idea that Meredith Farkas was proposing about annotating the catalog using a wiki.

Being part of our Children's Services team, I can get very excited about starting a wiki for the team to share ideas and tips, especially on storytimes! We are spread out and it is difficult to get everyone together as often as we'd like. This could be the answer to that challenge and is definitely worth examining further.

After looking quite a lot of wikis, I can see the free form nature of this tool. As I see some ways to use a wiki, I would be more comfortable with some more structure, i.e. using templates to set up the entries. I think it would be easier to sort through what could become a large amount of information. I did look at the Montana Librarians wiki and noticed that quite few did not have any recent entries or posts. I would be interested in knowing why...

Getting Bookmarks Organized and Tagging

After looking at Del.icio.us and different tags,I see both advantages and challenges in using it. The first tutorial discussed how different these tags are from folders...yes, I agree that there is a sense of randomness to it. I really like the video because everything was explained very clearly. Next I explored the mtlib20 account and found that a bit overwhelming until I dug a little into it. Though I wasn't able to see the comments, I did see all of the tags.

If I were to use this in a library environment, I would want to "personalize" the tags as much as possible to be able to get to the info quickly. I would like to think that the tags I chose would be ones that others would search and then be able to use the sharing aspect. However, as I was looking at the way some of the sites were tagged, I think I would add some that are a little more detailed. I ran into this a little bit with Library Thing. If tags are too broad, they really are not as useful.

I do like the idea of being able to access bookmarks from any computer by using the Del.icio.us site. I see the potential value of using Del.icio.us for research assistance but I have such a variety of questions. I wonder if others would be able to use what I might find...

YouTube and Me

There was so much on YouTube that I could have spent hours looking around. I found one of my favorite commercials there...not too useful for our library but it made me laugh out loud.

Another YouTube video that I enjoyed was one of the most viewed in 2007. It's appropriately called "Otters Holding Hands."

I can see using YouTube in the library to promote programs. Barring time and creativity restraints, we could make our own "commercials" and post them on our homepage. We could make a video "scrapbook" of other programs but would have to be sensitive to privacy issues expressed by both staff and customers alike. As I was looking around, I found some educational videos that teach something, which could be another way our customers could get the content or information they want or need.

Podcasting

This discovery exercise was a bit more challenging than the others to date. There was lots of exploring and I found quite a few podcast sites of interest. The bad news on some of these is that they had not done a podcast in several months. Others seemed very "grass roots," almost like a blog. Podcast Alley was the best directory for me as it had good genre lists and summaries. It was great to be able to go in and see exactly what a podcast was about, including one I found under "Kids and Family" that had an explicit warning (why was it under that genre rather than another?)...hmmm.

I was amazed at all of the language learning podcasts. I think tech savvy, traveling patrons could really find this useful. I also found one that had old time radio broadcasts so I guess a 21st century family could sit around the computer and listen to one of these rather than the radio. More likely this family would download to an MP3 player and listen to it on a car trip...who knows?

I was able to set up the RSS feed to my Bloglines account. For the exercise I chose National Geographic World Talk podcast which was like reading an article in the magazine. Educational as well entertaining...there were a few others that I was interested in and will probably add them later.

There seems to be a podcast out there for everyone and every interest!

"Royalty" Among Us

After reading the blog of my good friend, Lady Jane, I thought I would find my peculiar aristocratic title. Who would have guessed there is more royalty in the house? I will now be known in certain circles as

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Lady Lynn the Wholesome of Herring-le-hole Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

No bows are necessary but money is always welcome!