Wiki World

I first came across the expression"wiki-wiki" in a book I read as a child concerning a family living in Hawaii. It never occurred to me to link this with the Internet wikis that are proliferating. They have some very useful library applications. I especially liked the idea of using a library's website for a community page wiki; it would become an online bulletin board that could be updated easily and often. The instructional wiki is one we're becoming familiar with, and Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day from is a clearly organized example. The Booklovers Wiki of Princeton looked like fun, since we all like to talk about new books, don't we? Wikis seem to be able to stretch and expand to accommodate all kinds of information, opinions, and potential uses.

2.0 and Counting Icebergs

I was especially interested in Rick Anderson's thoughts on avoiding icebergs in the sea of technology. He voices concerns about practical matters libraries everywhere are facing, such as which print materials should be ordered or reordered in view of the available online options that may replace them. I agree with his view that making library technology more user-friendly will be better for patrons--I also appreciate his use of this older term rather than the retail-based "customers" moniker--than trying to teach each person coming in the door or dialing in or signing on how to use the technology we already have. Technoanxiety exists at many levels, in many degrees, and just as the process of filing taxes can turn some intelligent adults into quivering masses of ectoplasm 'round about April 15th, so can the thought of mastering yet another technological twist. Libraries exist to serve all of the public, not just the technically proficient.
The interactive nature of Web 2.0 is both a great strength and a potential weakness. In an environment where everyone is contributing and few are editing, we have to do our own fact-checking and the question of how to judge our sources becomes crucial. What is factual, what is theoretical, what is opinion or urban legend, what is simply playful? Mr. Anderson's point that libraries no longer have a monopoly on information leads me to ponder how our youngest computer users can be taught ways to evaluate what they see and use online.

Technorati

I never realized the blogosphere was so large or that it was growing so fast. And no, the explosion isn't entirely due to all of us engaged in 23 Things! "Learning 2.0" appeared in over 4000 blog posts when I searched this morning, but just under 300 blogs came up using this search term in Technorati's blog directory. Wonder what the totals will be a week from today?
I did find some surprises when comparing top favorited blogs to top blogs to top searches. The top ten faves were largely concerned with technology, but top searches also included the topics of diet and weight, proving that some human concerns never change. There was also a healthy dose of social networking and a not-so-healthy dose of pop culture (Britney Spears? C'mon, we can do better than that...) in evidence among the top searches, as well as interest in international news (the protests in Myanmar). The No. 1 favorited blog, BoingBoing.net, must be an enormous hit. Best Group Blog Award winner at the 2006 Bloggies? Can you imagine the ceremony? Maybe there's a Meez statuette out there akin to the golden Oscar.

Tag-- You're It!

I was surprised to see the variety of libraries which use del.icio.us. The ability to bookmark with such a tool could be very handy, since one of the main problems in research is remembering where you saw something you need to reference or review later. But tagging can also put you in touch with other computer users' bookmarks and provide a path to sites you might not have found otherwise. Noodling around in the tags brought me to FindSounds.com, which has a amazing library of sounds to call up online-- pretty useful if you're planning a program on birds (with various twitters and tweets), throwing a Halloween party (creaking door, evil laugh), or looking into the music of Australia (just what does a didgeridoo sound like?). Another search on the sounds tag brought me to audio files of famous speeches on the Free Information Society's website, www.freeinfosociety.com--potentially a good resource for students of 20th and 21st century politics.

Rollin' Along

I can see why Rollyo has become a recommended tool. Putting all your subject-related search engines in one place saves time and keystrokes, and I plan on using and adding to the music search roll I created (on www.rollyo.com, "explore" the category Folk music by bloodhound) after this course is completed. The rare books search roll we were invited to look at turned up some interesting results, but as in a brick-and-mortar store I discovered you still have to dig for what you want and modify your searches. Typing in just the names of several 19th century American authors one by one (Hawthorn, Longfellow, Thoreau) yielded nothing immediately. In a different search, the terms "first edition" brought up quite a lot of hits and paging through those directed me toward information on an early work by the Scandinavian author Ibsen. The usual pitfalls of making a search too general come into play as well: searching for "biography" or "algebra" using the PLCMC search roll yielded too much or the wrong kind of information. So Rollyo isn't perfect, but it's worth testing to see if it works for you.

Imagery

If it's true that we've become an increasingly image-driven society, then it's no surprise how many images can be conjured, er, generated online. Finding the right one to personalize your blog or voice your opinion or just get a laugh takes time, but it's fun to browse through the many options.
I most enjoyed Generator Blog (which pointed me toward the source for Dumbledore, imageGenerator.net)--and played with Meez without producing an avatar that was really "me" (such a closet to choose from, though!). Meez is like a grownups' version of paper dolls; whether you're creating a persona or something that more or less resembles what you look like, it can be very absorbing play.

Library Blogs

As informational and useful as the better known library blogs can be, some of them look as attractive as a microsized doughnut, unglazed, without sprinkles. A little visual appeal would go far in spreading the word that technology can be fun. Doing a quick survey based on content alone, I found MERLIN especially useful for its links to learning resources and technology-in-a-nutshell explanations, as well as for its easy reference list of library blogs to explore. Of the latter, Library Crunch was most interesting to me because of the broad range of topics it covered.

Feeding Time

This evening I set up my Bloglines newsreader account. Most of my initial subscription choices come from Bloglines' top 50 list, but I'm also trying out Britannica Blog (blogs.britannica.com) which I read about recently--in a print journal--and I'll no doubt learn of others which will sound tempting. I'm looking forward to getting news from the art world (Arts Journal was fun to browse), and keeping book reviews close to hand will be useful. I suspect I'll read more BBC World News online than I've managed to view on T.V.

Still Flickring

The term "mashups" reminds me of some horrible accident on the road or in the kitchen, but the concept is interesting. It's a logical outgrowth of web users' experimentation with permutations and combinations of sites. One mashup that caught my attention is depictr, which takes poems or song lyrics and pulls images from Flickr related to them to create a picture. You could, for example, get a visualization of the song that's been going through your head all day (well, maybe not THAT one--pick another song that hasn't been driving you crazy). See http://www.mcharper.com/lab/proxy/flickry.htm to get the idea.

Flikr Nature

My first look at Flickr brought me in contact with some exquisite nature photography by Marianna Koutna. One of her photos added during the past seven days, 'The Green Eye", is a wonderful study in colors and textures, with contrasts between the quiet silver-gray of bark and the vivid green of leaves edged in a red that veers toward magenta. I admire photographers who can capture the majesty of great landscapes, but I stand in awe of those who make us aware of the beauty of small, everyday things that too often go unnoticed.
Check out mariannakoutna's photostream; there's much to appreciate. "The Green Eye" is at
www.flickr.com/photos/mariannakoutna/1348251022/

Bloggings Will Continue...

...until I come to the end of my list. I played with LibraryThing a bit, then realized that trying to think of all my favorite books at once was making me freeze, as though I were taking an exam. Where to begin? There are the books I loved as a child, the ones I come back to every couple of years, the ones which made an indelible impression on me in a special place and time but which I feel no need to read again, the ones I didn't appreciate fully on first encounter but grew to understand gradually. Rather like trying to make a list of your friends. I guess I'll have to categorize books--which, as with friends, seems a pretty cold approach--every time I sign on to Thing to add titles. This problem aside, LibraryThing certainly could be a good way to connect with readers who share my tastes.

High Tech/Low Tech

This morning I started skimming through a bit of The Shifted Librarian, where a post from 8/24/07 brought into focus the strange jostling of technologies and expectations we're experiencing today. Apparently one of the e-book content providers, CafeScribe, is trying to combine the experience of reading a bound book with the ease of viewing the same text on line, using the fairly old technology of shipping scratch-and-sniff stickers with an "old book" smell when filling orders. It makes you wonder how much we humans have changed in our desire for tactile sensations. Many children certainly start to appreciate reading through the experience of nestling in a parent's lap, exploring the feel and smell--and taste!--of paper pages. At what age do we stop needing those comforting details and find everything we need in the text itself? Do we ever stop?
Will the next generation want those same stimuli, or will those readers become more visually oriented at an earlier age?

With a Little Help from My Friends

09/04/07: Starting the new month with a new (to me) technology, I've begun to set up my own blog. My first experience with a blog came several years back when hurricanes hit Florida and my family got updates on relatives living there through the blogging efforts of a tech-savvy cousin. Useful, I thought at the time. Ought to try this.
Now I can, with a little help.