Wiki's 2

For libraries, our Libnet is an obvious example of how Librarians can use a Wiki for collaboration and sharing of information that is of interest to all in our community. By using Wiki's there is lots of potential for getting library clients to really participate in ” their” library.

I explored the The National Library of Australia's Wiki called Library Labs
and ALIA have a number of Wiki's which I may look further into when I get the time.

I guess the key thing again, as in using the Internet generally, is to be aware that anyone and everyone can contribute, so the information contained on a Wiki may not be reliable.

Wiki's 1

Had a good exploration of a number of Wiki's. Got sidetracked by a community Wiki for a place called Davis in California. Quite fascinating. Lots of interesting facts and information about the place, such as "good study spots", "events", restaurants and cafes with reviews, and the history of Davis. There is a tab labeled "people" and under this people have added interesting (and not so interesting) facts about themselves and photos. The various animals of Davis even have their own entries! There is a guy who goes around the streets dressed in a tarzan outfit, and the wiki contains information and a photo of him in his outfit.

The privacy issue keeps coming up for me though. One inhabitant's entry contains pics of herself, the name of the person she is married to, and a link to where she works (with phone numbers). Maybe I am being a bit of a fuddy duddy, but that information now is out there in Internet world. ..and it worries me a bit.

Not-so-technical with Technorati

Found Technorati confusing. Confusing layout and confusing to use. All the adverts are way to distracting. Not sure of the point of it. I guess you have to be a serious blogger. It may be a good way of keeping up to date with developments in the area you are interested in.. but not in any area that I would be interested in.

de.icio.us and tagging

I had always wondered what tagging is? De.icio.us was easy to use though I had trouble adding a subscription. I can see now that adding bookmarks on a computer in the traditional way is quite restrictive. It is useful to be able to add several tags to the same resource. I was concerned that if you had a large number of sites bookmarked, that to organise them you would need to be careful with the bookmarks you used. This was before I realised that the tags you have used are displayed in De.icio.us and you can pick from them. In this day an age when people move regularly between computers and mobile devices, it is useful to have your bookmarks follow you.

It is also in an organisation's interest to add a link to De.icio.us. as another way for potential clients to acccess it. Checked a few out = the State Library of New South Wales has a link to De.icio.us, but the Taronga Park Zoo hasn't . It was quite satisfying to realise that I could now recognise a number of those mysterious ittle icons (Facebook. Twitter, Flickr and now De.icio.us) on a website.

Oh what joy!

As I was listening  to "Beauty and the Beast" on LibriVox, I was thinking about how useful it would be if I could play this in the car for my daughter...we have some old cassettes with stories on that she loves. Then, the realisaiton that if we had an  iPhone or iPod, we could. And of course ... we could access all types of music for her to listen to..  Wow.. And of course .. how wonderful to have this capability for people and library clients who are hearing impaired. And they wouldn't be limited to home computers or library computers if they had a roaming device.

Though I found the quality of the recordings and the skills of the person reading the book varied, it was still a great resource.

Using Google Books

Have always meant to explore this site. It is not immediatly apparent how to search for fully digitised books. Found the option in Advanced Search by ticking the "Full View Only". A search for the subject dentistry showed only 8 books. Could not see any information on how they decide on their subjects. Of course the results only show full text of non copyright books. It will be interesting to see, if Google win the right to sell copyright books, how the service will change . It will become far more valuable if this happens.

I found it useful  to be able to preview books that are under copyright, and which gives you an idea if you want to actually buy the book.  You can do this in Amazon but not sure if you can do this to the same extent. Another useful feature is being able to export bibliographic details into EndNote.

LibraryThing and things

It was fun entering details of books I have read into this. Must tell my husband about this site as he used to keep a note (a long time ago when he had more time and before children), of all the books he read and classify them into different categories. A librarian in the making!! Not sure why he did this at the time.

Anyway this site is potentially very useful if you are interested in a certain genre and would like an idea of what to read next. Can be interesting reading other peoples take on a book you have read, and I think that i would use this site for that purpose.  I don't think I will use it to record details of my collection (such as it is!).