Week 7, Thing 17; sandbox wiki

I feel proud that I could now handle this relatively simple post of my blog to the sandbox wiki. I realize my blog is pretty boring with only entries so far about 23 Things activities, but I will try to get some of my England pictures up there to make it a little more fun. Posted to Love the Rockies and fun to see another CCPL entry under comments.

Week 7, Thing 16; wiki's

As CCPL has used wiki's for several different projects in the past such as development of the Finksburg Branch, I thought I knew something about wiki's. Again, I was wrong. There are a wide variety of wiki's out there and more uses than I was aware of. I think that there are uses that can be very applicable to library communities, such as Gail's proposal and Dorothy's collaboration on a Peer Coaching wiki that developed out of the Peer Coaching pilot. This has been a real learning experience in ways to share professional information to a group and to replace a "binder" of information with expanded information through video, downloadable text, and comments from librarians. It can then be shared with a larger library community also. Some of the wiki's that I browsed were more informational or useful than others. The Princeton book review wiki was pretty straightforward in providing that service on a simple level--reviews were not in depth but gave a flavor of the reviewer's thoughts about the book. I found the Bull Run Library wiki interesting in that it was "run" by a patron and while it purported to be about programs at the library had expanded to postings about other libraries, including an article on Maryland doing 2.0, and even referrals to blogs and websites about a variety of topics.
The Library Services wiki was a great example of how the library community could contribute to professional information on a national level about a huge variety of services or information areas within professional needs and responsibilities. I will be referring to the teen programs section for further information to use in LATI about teen progrogramming. I think wiki's about major events, planning and soliciting public input, such as the Finksburg wiki as excellent ways library could use wiki's . Probably the most disconcerting aspect is being open to editing and adding to posts can be done by anyone, although most times libraries would be more restricted than say Wikipedia.

Week 6, Thing 15; Library 2.0

Wow! Hard to comment on just one of the articles about Library 2.o as I found myself caught up in the whole discussion with the links from one point of view to the next. The utube video was extremely interesting and I checked out a utube response that raised some interesting points about media being the message and questioning the participatory experience, especially sensory on the web. This debate was later raised in some of the points of view about web 2.0 and it will be interesting to hear the results of the study on virtual reference and patrons experiences re: satisfaction with the interface and information.
I felt the comments in "Away from the icebergs" may be more relevant to college and university libraries. We may be experiencing a flat lining in circulations, but certainly not the 55% at his university, but we are also very pleasure reading focused. I agree user education is the key and we need to start early in the formal education process--but how does the average teacher in the classroom keep up in order to help students learn important web skills and decision making--does the public library have a role here?
I found "In temporary spaces" extremely thought provoking--refering back somewhat to the sensory participatory experience and how that may be reflected in the virtual web. Learned about new concepts to me--Library 3.0 and 4.0 and SecondLife3 being used by savy web users.
Sorry, I couldn't stop at one --"A rural school district" seems to have many lessons on success that would serve well for many libraries to look at.

week 6, Thing 14; Technorati

This was a very interesting tool that opened a new world for me about blogging. The video was helpful in finding out where to search in different ways. Searching by blog using Learning 2.0 brought up numerous hits that did not directly relate to the key word idea I was searching for. It gave hits for any combination of Learning and 2.0. I did see some recent posts by others who are pursuing 23 Things. Searching by directory drastically reduced the number of hits to 553, but again, really had to search to find something most relevant. Using the tags search was quite a surprise as it showed only a few direct hits on the key word on the first page and also some links to video clips. This was the most useful search.
I think of myself as someone who keeps fairly abreast of the news--living with a news editor--and with the more popular culture, but doing the blog searches for favorites, top search and top blogs--I was amazed at how out of touch I apparently am in regard to the younger generations. I did not even recognize some of the names or subjects on top blogs and favorites! After looking at a few, I felt even more of a dinosaur, especially after reading blogs about Ron Paul running for President, popular music hits from groups I never heard of, etc. I realized that if you want to know what teens, college age and 20 somethings in particular are talking about and seeing as important doing Technorati blog search would be one way to keep in touch. Of course I was not as surprised by the amount of interest in technology blogs as this is such a hot topic and again, one I'm not as familiar with.
I mentioned this site to my husband and was surprised that his news organization will take punitive action, including dismissal for employees reading blogs at work. It seems they may be missing the boat in keeping a pulse on what different segments of the population are thinking and where the interest are.

Week 6, Thing 13: Del.icio.us

At first I had some trouble understanding the difference between delicious and the other bookmarks like bloglines. The first tutorial did not seem to helpful, but the second resource made it a little clearer. With some help from my friends, and especially my daughter Heather, I had an epipheny and realized that the real blessing of delicious is being able to search my bookmarks on any computer, any where, any time. I have opened a delicious account, but have only added 1 web site so far. I did find a web site on one of the library web sites to add to both my blogline and eventually to my rollyo account (starfall). It was a web site I had heard mentioned by some parents at a workshop, but couldn't remember later. That was a nice surprise.

Week 5, Thing 12: Rollyo searches

Rollyo could be very helpful in rapidly retrieving new and/or pertinent information to be used for handouts, newsletters, workshops for various projects I'm currently working on, such as the emergent literacy grant. It could also help me to stay current by quickly searching my most commonly used sites and subject areas. For example, I've started to create a school readiness search which can be accessed below.

Select...Growing While LearningSchool ReadinessSearch The Web

Week 5, Thing 11: Library Thing

My Library Thing Catalog

This would be a really quick way to catalog a large personal collection. I am not sure how much I would personally use this tool, but it could be very helpful for a book club. I think that it would be great to use it to find people with the same reading tastes and perhaps form book clubs online to read popular and favorite books, or even obscure and unique books that not very many people read. This could potentially bring people together with the same interests and they could chat online about the books.