PBWiki Sandbox

It took me a little while to add my blog to the "Favorite Blog" page as they have been having problems with the URL linking feature. I would have been finished sooner if I had read a little further ahead and seen the warning rather than taking it step by step. :)

Adding a new page or editing an existing one seems to be easy to me although I have not created a Wiki from scratch. Maybe I'll have to give that a try and see if it presents more of a challenge.

Wikis

I have learned that there are a lot of different ways that a Wiki can be used. Being a control freak, I think that I am more comfortable with the idea of using them in a "private" setting such as within in an organization for training and other collaborative efforts. Librarians conducting Outreach events/activities (ie a database class) could post their handouts and presentation materials to a wiki. Attendees (ie teachers) would then have access to current resources and information. Also, an area could be created for the teachers to share ideas of how they used the database to teach their students.

I am leery of using it in the general public realm because of spammers, etc. I know that the poster needs to know the log in information but, with so many people knowing that information, the potential for abuse is great.

If the library decides to have a public wiki, then an "AV Zone" would be a great idea. The AV Wiki could list new releases and be a forum for patrons to post their reviews of the movies.

Web 2.0/Library 2.0

While I agree that we need to embrace the Web 2.0 technologies, I don't think that we should be using them to completely replace our "just in case" collections as the article "Away from the Icebergs" seems to suggest. In doing so, we would be driving away certain groups of patrons ie the poor and seniors. Some people are unable to afford Internet access at home and are unable to spend the time that they need at the library in order to discover the information that they want or require electronically. A book is much more portable. There are also seniors who don't feel comfortable with technology and don't want to learn. If we are aiming to be inclusive, we don't want to alienate our Seniors by pressuring them to learn a new technology and removing everything with which they are familiar.

Also, in my experience, patrons still want books. If they are traveling, as said before, a book is much more portable. Do-It-Yourself car mechanics want a book by their side as they peer into the engine in front of them. Recreational readers want a book in their hand as they lay curled up on the couch. It's hard to get comfortable with a laptop on your lap when you have to keep scrolling and adjusting the screen to read what's next. The kids coming into the library this summer may be interested in computers but they are also looking for books.....Why else would some our shelves be completely devoid of books by a particular author? These shelves are normally full.

I don't mean to sound anti-technology. I just believe that we can't REPLACE our "just in case" collections COMPLETELY with it.

One last thought....I agree with Michael Stephens, author of "Into a New World of Librarianship," that we need to make "good, yet fast decisions." If we don't, we won't be able to keep up. By the time we are getting the newest technological advance, it will be passe.

Technorati

I conducted a search on the term "library 2.0" using the "Exact Phrase" feature under the heading "Advanced Search." It yielded 7,091 hits. When I searched for the same phrase using "Tags," the first thing to come up was a "Quick View." Looking under each of the tabs shown in "Quick View," I saw that it had returned 22,555 posts and 333 blogs. It also yielded videos and pictures but did not provide a count of how many were returned under these categories. For the most part a lot of hits were relevant.

Next, I searched for blogs on Westies. I found information that I had not seen when I had used other blog search engines as a part of the Library 2.0 project. However, I had to sift through a lot of extraneous sites to do so and even some of the "relevant" hits returned did not impress me.

I guess that the topic of your search plays a role in the results. Maybe technology bloggers are more serious (Is that the word I want?) about their topic as I found a lot less junk with the Library 2.0 search than the Westie one.

An interesting side note....I searched for Technorati on Wikipedia and found that Technorati does not search My Space blogs. Also, according to the entry, it appears that Techornati concentrates on images rather than blogs. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati)

Del.icio.us

I have mixed feelings about the usefulness of this site. On the one hand, I like that one has access from anywhere to their "favorite" Web sites and that one can see the "favorites" of others. However, I think that the folksonomy of Del.icio.us is problematic. If one wants to find all of the sites that have the tag "Readers Advisory," then one will have to think of all of its variations in order to obtain a more comprehensive result. If Del.icio.us used a classification system, I would feel more confident in discovering more of the sites in which I might be interested.

I like the subscription feature. I have already found more helpful sites.

One last thought....is it just me that has a hard time seeing how many others have saved a site? I have a hard time reading the light blue/pink combo.

Rollyo

I discovered creating and maintaining a Searchroll on Rollyo to be simple. However, in my experience, I don't see much of a use for this site. It might have been the topic, Westies, which I used for practice or, maybe, I didn't include enough sites to make the Searchroll useful. I also found myself putting sites on my Westie Galore Searchroll with which I am very familiar. Thus, I already knew whether or not I was going to find the required information. Finally, when I conducted a search using my own creation, hits from sites that I had not included in my search were returned. How did that happen?

I performed a search for "replacement windows" using the Home Repair Searchroll that is already provided. Some valuable information was yielded indicating that Rollyo might be of limited use.

Next, I conducted a search using the "Web" option. In doing so, I basically searched Yahoo! as Rollyo is powered by it. I would rather just go straight to Google if I am going to do a general Web search.

Library Thing

I think this site is great. I found it very easy to use and love the reader's advisor aspect of it. The one thing for which I didn't care is having to choose from all of the editions of a particular title. If I was a collector that wanted an exact representation of my collection, then I guess that feature would be useful.