Week 7, #16 & 17-- Wikis and Technology

Week 7, #16 -- Wikis
Our library actually has a wiki for internal use. We can use it to let one another know about situations, class projects, current displays, etc. that are going on in our library. This is just another avenue for communication besides e-mail. The drawback is that it is only as good as the members who remember to post to it!


Week 7, #17 -- Technology
As my son was working on a research paper for his English class, I was thinking of how much easier, in one sense, research and preparation are today. I was one of the fortunate ones, because I had an electric typewriter in college. In addition, my professors frequently allowed us to use erasable bond paper, so that we weren't forced to retype a sheet or paint it with White-Out if we made a typing error. How much easier it is today, however, to type your paper, change the font size, erase entire paragraphs, have your spelling checked, block your type, and even automatically have your footnotes placed at the bottom of a page.

Does he need a resource? With a few clicks of the computer he has access to electronic books and journal articles on his topic. No more pouring through volume after volume of paper indexes. However, citations have become more onerous.

Changing subjects: One of my favorite technology candies is downloading audio books from eBranch onto my MP3 player! I love this!!!

Week 6, #15 -- Perspectives on Web 2.0

I believe that the most significant improvements are those that Web 2.0 can bring to library services, such as using an open WorldCat, providing graphical means of searching by place, or using collective tags to make items more easily searchable. The harnessing of collective intelligence is a tool that will help libraries as well as their users.

Week 6, #14 -- Technorati

I spent some time in Technorati and found that a keyword search in posts (972), tags (672), and directory (775) yielded different results. This is not surprising, since people tag different ways and frequently may not tag at all. I searched through favorites, and I searched for blogs on hummingbirds and Rockport, Texas, since that is a topic that is of interest to me. I found 4. I elected not to claim my current blog. Perhaps in the future I may create a blog on hummingbirds and claim that one.

Week 6 -- #13, Tagging with del.icio.us

I created a del.icio.us account last year, and really haven't used it. Today, as I was working on this assignment, I attended a library program presented by one of our geography profs that really slammed home the power of tagging. He showed us a film clip about Photosynth, a new technology that takes images from the internet, analyzes their similarities, and seams them together to create a 3D visual representation of places. You can view the clip at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129. The tagging issue is important, because the program relies on tags, such as those assigned to images in Flickr, to identify the images that it uses. Also, I like the fact that I can create a Favorites list that is accessible to me from any computer! I just moved my Outlook favorites list to del.icio.us.

Week 4, #12 -- Library Elf

I was able to register for this with no problems. It showed me the items that I have checked out and those that I am waiting for. I don't really see the advantage to this, however, since Horizon does the same thing. This would be great for patrons who do not have access to this type of information, but I don't see how it really helps me.

Week 5, #11

I already had a Library Thing account that I created last year. For this assignment, I added several titles, a link, and the author cloud. I think this is an interesting tool, but I don't really care to make my library public.

Week 5, #10 -- Avatar

This is fun!! This is the first avatar that I have ever tried to create, and I really enjoyed it. It reminds me of playing with paper dolls when I was a kid, only there aren't any little tabs for me to accidentally cut off! I will try some of the others, too.