Wikis

My favorite wiki is wikihow.com "the how to manual that you can edit." There's all kinds of things in there, like crafts, home improvement and recipes.


Library Success
I looked here and there and found a mix of entries that included links to other sources.

I liked the discussion tab, there I saw people who explained the how, why and wheres of edits and organization that they did. On the day I took a look at it, there was a message that the site now required a real email address to register (only register people can edit).

This wiki can be a way to professionally grow, since you learn about what other libraries and librarians are doing, as well practicing your own skills as you bring information to the table by way of edits.



Ocean County- Wikipedia article

I looked at the edits and hadn't a clue on whether or not they were library staff. I think that whoever edited the posting about Lakewood and Beach Haven had to be some body who knew the history, it might be staff! Thanks to Oclwebthings, I did something with tabs, which I had never thought to do and I got interesting results in Library Success (see above)

Note on Wikipedia- I've used it personally, usually to find fun stuff, rather than serious matters.

Technorati

I looked around Technorati over several days before I posted and got different results for "Learning 2.0" today I got videos that looked like they would be useful and one blog. The top two in the list had nothing to do with what I was looking for. The other day, there was nothing in the top 5 or so that I thought I could use. Maybe it was the caps or lack of caps?
I went into the popular listings and didn't see many surprises, considering the type of user that I think would use Technorati-there was a lot of Internet related links there.
Then I did a search related to a reference question I did recently on the Pine Barrens. The top two were about a murder case, I found a wild ride Jeep video that was fun, but useless for my purposes. And a review of F. Paul Wilson's new book.
This could be used as a tool, but I think it can be time consuming- it looks to me that the latest blogs were on the top of the list. If I were doing serious research I might worry about the accuracy of the information, unless the blog was written and/or part of a website that is edited and the research can be verified in some way.

I played in the Sandbox

For postings: I think that we have information pretty well-covered in Oceannet and Open Cs. I think also that we only have so much time and most people will probably only have time to check our official work site. "computer tips" will find a good home there!

Edit: Bloomin' made a good point that I didn't consider:

This would be great for group projects, where people can add or edit and leave suggestions. Since one has to be invited to come in it will keep things together until ready for presentation. I'm sure that my focus group can use something like this.

del.icio.us

Way to go, Stafford!

I took a look at the Wikis by Common Craft bookmark. I then looked at "Sanjora" who recommended this for 2.0 bookmarking. I thought that this had to be a librarian's site and I was correct. Sanjora's tags included "2.0 ', "web2.0" and "library". I also saw one from "tseyb" who said that this video was good for teachers who wanted to learn about Wikis. Tseyb's had tags like 1st grade, 5th grade , along with flickr and other Internet tags.

After poking around a bit, I came to these conclusions:

After seeing Sanjora's and tseyb's bookmarks I can see how these are useful for professional and industry growth. I can share something that others may not know about and then in turn learn from others, since I can't find everything on my own. As Oclwebthings noted, this is a powerful tool and capable of truly expanding knowledge.
While I was looking at the tags for teachers, it occurred to me that we need to be prepared to help students and other customers when they come in asking for help with bookmarking sites like del.icio.us or at the very least know what they are asking about and find sources of information on the subject for them. I can see these social bookmarks have the potential to become an important tool for a lot of people.

Library Use: Stafford has already proven that we can use the web tools that young people are using today, as did Nashville Public. I couldn't spend a lot of time with the San Mato Library's bookmarks-they seemed to be a mix of library staff and public usage. This might be a bit confusing for the general public

NetLibrary and WorldCat

NetLibrary

Before this challenge, I did help a few patrons get their accounts and walked them through the searching, but did not use it myself. I did a little exploring under "etiquette" hoping to find my favorite bun-haired advisor, but no luck. I did find the Complete Idiot's Guide to Cultural Etiquette.
I scrolled down the table of contents and read a few pages. I'm not sure that I will use this myself a lot, if I find an nonfiction book that we don't have, I might like to use it. I prefer a old fashion codex myself for fictional reading. I would consider this another tool for information gathering, but if a patron wants to do reading for entertainment or information, then I can guide them through with more assurance.

WorldCat

I've used WorldCat for ILLs for the following reasons:

• Types of books that Amazon wouldn't have the info on, usually Out of Print, but one time I was able to find a local history book on a cemetery in New York.
• Speeding the process by finding locations for the staff in ILL (when patrons really needed a rush job)
• Just because I can!

OclWebthings Challenge

I picked a recent book that I read called Game Over by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. The closest library to have this title on 4/11 is Mount Laurel Public Library which is 40 miles away. I saw under the Subject tab that I can search for "similar items by subject". I don't remember using the advanced search, since I didn't need to in the past. I like how simple it is, the only fault I would find would that I think that Format should be on the top part of the page, rather than be down on the lower half. You don't see it at first, along with "publication date range", "audience" and "language". On second thought, I don't see why the page is divided like that, a person might think that the top half is all that there is. These search terms are important too. For instance , I might want a certain juvenile DVD in Spanish that had to be the one published in a certain time span . . .

LibraryThing

I'm here to report on my adventures in LibraryThing. I looked around a bit and experimented by editing, deleting, reviewing, tagging and commenting on entries. My library of 5 ranges from I, Robot by Asimov which goes back to late 50s to Game Over by Harrold-Eagles which was acquired by our system just a few weeks ago. Oddly enough, of them all I, Robot had the most at over 3,000, while Game Over only had 2 (it is brand new, after all, at least in America, I'm sure it was published in Britain a while back). I checked out the Librarians group and saw postings from over the world-WOW. There were postings from New Zealand, England, Germany and other countries.
Here is my posting:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=GenreTalker

Technology Blog

So far, I'm amazed and looking forward to future challenges of the Oclwebthings. My thoughts:

• I might become addicted to flickr if I ever get my own camera!
• The bloglines account is keeping me up-to-date from my favorite news sources. I'm really liking this.
• The blogs I've found through the challenge and the ones I found on my own before can be useful, but too often they are opinion pieces that can be mean, plain crazy or misrepresent the facts of the matter.