Peanut Butter Wiki (Week 7, Exercise 17)

I have entered my blog to the SJLibrary's Learning 2.0 Wiki. I have also just entered a trip suggestion for anyone looking to go on a road trip through northern Arizona. It is listed under the Favorite Vacation Sites. I have to admit, however, that wikis can be a little disorganized, but fun at the same time. I enjoyed looking at some of my fellow co-workers' favorites, and all those movie posters.

Wikis (Week 7, Exercise 16)

I remember reading a news article about a guy who, as a joke, wrote a fake profile on wikipedia about his boss. He said some pretty ridiculus things. There was, of course, a great deal of backlash when something happened to the boss because of the negative wikipedia entry. The guy who wrote it ended up losing his job. I always think about that when I think of wikis. They are great when they are freely accessed. It is very easy to just jump over to wikipedia and grab quick facts, but you can never really be sure of the validity of the information. But in the end they are easy to use, but then...

Anyway, I took a look at some of the other wikis and it seemed pretty obvious that you can create a credible wiki and negate a lot of the content problems when you have professionals developing the content.

Thoughts and Opinions (Week 6, Exercise 15)

After reading a few of the articles on Library 2.0, I believe that Michael Stephens's Into a New World of Librarianship stood out the most, mainly because of his presentation. He writes the article as a list of things he does, the ultimate example of a great 2.0 Librarian. Perhaps he is only being humble, listing his suggestions? Anyway, he does have some great ideas (I love the control technolust idea), but at the same time he is completely biased. On the subject of Library 2.0, I believe that many of the web sites and programs are pretty awesome, if you know what you are doing. Is this how we knit the digital divide?

The Thing About Tagging

The thing about tagging blog posts is that in the end everyone is coming up with these tags. That is both a strength and a weakness. There is no controlled vocabulary.

Technorati (Week 6, Exercise 14)

As I am sure you can see, I went to Technorati and did an advanced claim for my blog. I now have the Technorati search box and links on my side bar. I have yet to start tagging my posts, but I feel that tagging will be the next step. I have to admit, however, that I have no idea why Kathy Sierra is the top search. Anyway, the thing about searching for blogs is that the search capabilities are pretty weak when you first jump into it. Just choosing a tag to search brings up a pretty motley group of blogs. With just current-events as a search term, I get blogs about anything from farming to DVDs.

Rosegarden Library

I would just like to state for the record that I was able to write up quite a few of my posts at the Rosegarden Branch Library. In fact all of my posts written on March 28, were completed there (though I forget to write it in every post). I was able to work on several of the exercises while working there. I found that the branch was particularly dedicated to completing the 2.0 program. I am very grateful to them for providing the opportunity, even though I was only there a few hours at a time.

Del.icio.us (Week 6, Exercise 13)

Del.icio.us (apart from being very annoying to type out) is pretty fun to use, once you actually get started. I had a hard time figuring out how to set up my tool bar to get del.icio.us to work optimally (there just never seems to be enough room). One of my co-works had the same problem, so I was able to see how she corrected it. That helped.
I also went through the Library's del.icio.us favorites and found it funny that the top two are a site about living with cats and another about Children's literature. The latter I can understand and the former, well, I can understand that one too. I miss my cat. But it is really amazing the things you find just by collecting all the "health" items. I doubt a google search would come up with a death count generator.

(Post completed at the Rosegarden Branch Library.)