Like RSS feeds, I feel very “Meh” about wikis. I see how they can be useful in the world, but I’m less thrilled about their potential for the public library. They are a handy way to post information for the staff (like the mat man wiki), but that doesn’t really take advantage of the contributive nature of wikis (it’s not like I’m doing that much editing of the collection development manual). By their very nature, to be truly a community spot, wikis require community buy-in and contribution. I have a hard time imagining the public adding to and cleaning up library-created subject guides, or putting community information on the library wiki. Like most of this web 2.0 stuff, I think wikis will find their place in our future world, but it may not be as central as many of the current proponents envision.
Online Libraries December 22, 2008
I tried out Library Thing and Good Reads, and I wasn’t really a fan of either. Or rather, I liked parts of both of them, but neither of them seemed to work for me. I liked the ease of adding titles in Good Reads, and I liked that it had a non-flash widget that I could put in my wordpress blog (though I don’t like that it’s all one line). In Library Thing, I liked being able to tag books, which would make it much more useful for Readers Advisory and provide a handy way to search and sort the many, many titles we have jumbled in our heads. I also liked the full cataloging it provided (I am a librarian, after all) However, adding new titles was very clunky and it seemed to take awhile for each one to load. I think that Good Reads would be a handy way to track what I’ve read for my own personal enjoyment, and Library Thing would be a good tool for readers advisory, but neither really works for me. Wish there was a way to combine what I like of both, so I guess I’ll keep my eyes out for new versions now that I can see the possibilities.
RSS Feeds November 12, 2008
Meh. That’s kind of how I feel about feeds and feed readers. In my real life, I read quite a few blogs, mainly of the mommy/family type, but I’ve never really liked using a reader. I keep the sites bookmarked, and it’s part of my morning (or evening) routine, get a cup of coffee and click on each one to see what’s happening. I don’t like using a feed reader because you lose all of the blog design, they all look the same. I know it’s kind of silly, but after reading these blogs for years (some of them), I feel like I know these people, and I like to visit them. I like to go to each site, see the design, see the pictures. Going to a blogger’s site is like dropping by for a cup of coffee, whereas using a reader is kind of like e-mail, I guess, you lose some of the personality.
That said, I can see how a feed reader could be useful for other applications, especially keeping up with news or events. It would be a lot easier to have the news stories you’re interested in sent to you and be able to read them all in one place rather than clicking around to NYTimes, Washington Post, CNN, LJ, etc. I do like the way other libraries are using feeds to update on new books and library happenings. It would be nice to have a feed that listed events for each branch so that folks could get that information directly. At a PTA event last night I asked if or how people found out about library happenings and the most frequent response was “if it doesn’t come home from school or into my e-mail, I don’t know about it.” An RSS feed wouldn’t hit the e-mail, but it would be a step closer at least.
Photo Time!! October 29, 2008
I am supposed to post photos to my blog, to prove that I am all knowledgeable about this web 2.0 stuff (yeah right). So anyway, here are some pics of my recent world travels (click to bigify):
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- The Blue Lagoon, Iceland
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- Guilfoss Waterfall, Iceland
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- A View across the Petrusse River, Luxembourg City
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- Luxembourg City
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- Duh!
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- Gargoyles on Notre Dame
It was a great trip, but I missed my little guy an awful lot.
Flickr June 30, 2008
What do I think of Flickr? Well, I think it’s a fun way to share photos, one of the many ways to share them that exist. Photo albums, blogs, snapfish and the like, flickr is a user-friendly new take on those. I really did enjoy looking through the LOC color photos of the 1930s, but you can see those on the LOC prints & photographs site. I guess the real value is in the sharing aspect of flickr. It makes images like those much more accessible to the general public (as does much of the internet). The drawback to that is, of course, that your photos are accessible to the general public. I know of more than a few instances where an individual’s photos posted to flickr were used by media companies without notification, attribution, or payment. Blogger Tracey Gaughran-Perez of sweetney.com saw a photo of her pug, Truman, appear on the Fox football broadcast read more here, and blogger Jim from sweet juniper found his photo of his daughter on Babble’s website backstory here. All of these images were copyrighted, and both companies blamed an intern who “made a mistake”. Tagging in Flickr makes it very easy for people to find images, both people you would want to find your photo and people you wouldn’t. Not that I’m trying to be all doom and gloom here (after all, I post my son’s photos to my personal website), but it’s something to keep in mind.
So, how could a library use Flickr? The most obvious is to post photos of library events, perhaps as part of a publicity blog. We have a programming blog, but the reasons that blog isn’t open to the public are the same reasons that a library Flickr account would be difficult. The LoC’s photo posting to get more info and tags is an innovative use, and a good one for a photo sharing site. They’ll have to sort through the tags, of course, and I’m curious to see if they get any new data on the photos or if they tend to be “gee whiz” sorts of comments.
Shshhing Exercises 