Thing #16: Playing around with wikis

Well that was a pretty fun experience. I like how collaborative wikis are and how they can become a great source of information on all sorts of different topics for all those who visit it, especially amongest a group of people who can ask questions, share stories, pictures, etc.

Web 2.0 Thoughts

In my humble opinion, I think the library of the future is mostly going to serve as a hub of transition into an age where digital information will be the norm and printed items will more rapidly become obsolete. We'll serve as a source of internet access for those that still do not have it available at their homes and through our trained staff, a source of information on how to use the technology the customers need to find the information they are looking for. With more devices like the Amazon Kindle on the horizon, a portable device that display books, magazines, and newspapers digitally, customers will simply be able to download the item they want to their home computer or a portable device. In the future, perhaps libraries could continue to loan these items digitally for free, because these items are going to cost something regardless of whether they are in physical or digital form.

Library Wikis

So, I spent a little while checking out some library wikis and found them somewhat helpful, but containing mostly information that can be found fairly easily using the reference resources on our own website. I did find, however, one thing I think can be applied to our organization and that's creating a wiki, linked through our main website, where customers can submit reviews of the books they have read. For instance, if a customer is looking for a item on our website, a customer could see a link to the wiki in the item screen where they could find other customers' opinions of it, which could help them decide whether or not they wish to check the item out. Just a thought.

Del.icio.us

Well, I am certainly enjoying some of the new things we're trying out here for Learn & Play. Like some of the others, I had heard of del.icio.us before, but had never tried it. I especially like the tagging feature, which gives people the ability to find numerous sites by topics or other keywords just by doing a search. The thing I've always find most irritating about using most search engines is that you often have to know exactly what site you're looking or else it'll take you a decent amount of time to find what you're looking for, if at all.

Twitter

Twitter is actually a fairly interesting site where you can find out pretty much everything that's going on in someone's life, in the world, etc. in a matter of seconds. The main use of this type of site for library purposes would be a kind of answer and question sort of thing where people can get a quick answer by phone, e-mail, or web browser.

Just in case you're interested, and I just know you are, my twitter user name is: Maverick4527

LibraryThing

This is actually a pretty nice site that, among other things, gives you book recommendations based on the books you've added to the site that you've already read. Since it was early in the morning when I was surfing the site, I simply added the last 5 books that I've read to the site.

Here's the link to my profile page on the site with my 5 books: http://www.librarything.com/home/Maverick4527

Online Image Generator

Well, that was pretty fun. I had actually never used an online image generator before and knew next to nothing about it. Well, here's the image I generated.
FYI, I used http://www.letterjames.com/