My oldest son put together a wiki when he was getting married. He was living in Prince George's County, his now wife was living in Towson, her family lives in York, PA, we were up here in Cecil, and most of the people invited to the wedding lived out of state. It was an easy way to keep the wedding planning on track and keep everyone informed.
His wiki was private, he had to approve membership for anyone who wanted to view it. I see this as a great use for wikis. Using them to coordinate conferences, like the ALA conference, or using them on inTRAnets, makes wikis helpful and beneficial.
Open wikis, though, like the behemoth Wikipedia, are problematic. Stephen Colbert has been banned from Wikipedia for showing his viewers how to contribute to its "truthiness". This link will take you to an op/ed story by someone who was the victim of deliberate - and damaging - false information posted on Wikipedia, for 132 days, while Wikipedia dodged responsibility and took its time correcting the entry.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
Another concern is writer bias skewing the information, possibly away from objective truth. More and more educational entities are not accepting wikipedia as a reference resource on research papers because of the fluidity and potential bias of the information.
I think wikis have great potential as private resources, but are problematic as open venues on the World Wide Web.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
#15, Library 2.0
I'd seen that cool video early on, linking to it from the Harford County Public Library blogspot. That video merges technology with art in a kinda wistful way.
Again, web 2.0 was a frequent discussion topic in my grad class. I came away from the class readings and discussions with the same attitude expressed in Thing 15's reading.
Web 2.0/Library 2.0 is here, however briefly! Younger patrons take it for granted. If libraries are going to stay relevant to them, librarians have to be up to speed on the technology too - and prepared to keep keeping up as the technology morphs and changes and takes off in user driven directions.
It's important, though, to balance the technology with old fashioned customer service skills. Provide the technology more and more patrons are using, but also be ready to serve the patron who doesn't like/understand technology - as well as the patron who needs adaptive technology to access information. Rick Anderson writes in "Away from the Icebergs":
"We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning."
The key phrase is "eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need". Sometimes the barrier to be removed is inefficient technology, sometimes it's inaccessible technology, but sometimes it's too much technology. Balancing the old and the new is key to removing barriers.
Again, web 2.0 was a frequent discussion topic in my grad class. I came away from the class readings and discussions with the same attitude expressed in Thing 15's reading.
Web 2.0/Library 2.0 is here, however briefly! Younger patrons take it for granted. If libraries are going to stay relevant to them, librarians have to be up to speed on the technology too - and prepared to keep keeping up as the technology morphs and changes and takes off in user driven directions.
It's important, though, to balance the technology with old fashioned customer service skills. Provide the technology more and more patrons are using, but also be ready to serve the patron who doesn't like/understand technology - as well as the patron who needs adaptive technology to access information. Rick Anderson writes in "Away from the Icebergs":
"We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning."
The key phrase is "eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need". Sometimes the barrier to be removed is inefficient technology, sometimes it's inaccessible technology, but sometimes it's too much technology. Balancing the old and the new is key to removing barriers.
Monday, August 13, 2007
#14, Technorati
I've tried to get past this "thing" several times. Each time I go to Technorati, expecting to explore, discover, post. Each time I've been underwhelmed. This time, I told myself, "well, just post that you don't like Technorati."
I don't like Technorati.
I think the concept has merit, but, again, not everyone experimenting with web 2.0 is looking to harness the power of the web to learn. Lots of people are just playing or griping or exploiting or summarizing a ho-hum day. Technorati seems to feature these groups' blogs.
I suspect if I could set aside my dislike of Technorati's surface I might discover treasures lying beneath, but I just don't want to invest the time on a website that highlights trash and nothingness.
I don't like Technorati.
I think the concept has merit, but, again, not everyone experimenting with web 2.0 is looking to harness the power of the web to learn. Lots of people are just playing or griping or exploiting or summarizing a ho-hum day. Technorati seems to feature these groups' blogs.
I suspect if I could set aside my dislike of Technorati's surface I might discover treasures lying beneath, but I just don't want to invest the time on a website that highlights trash and nothingness.
Relevent article
Saw this article on my customized Googlenews homepage. Couldn't be more relevent!
http://allafrica.com/stories/200708131728.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/200708131728.html
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
#13, Tagging and Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us pages are too cluttered, too busy, for me to want to spend a lot of time using the features. It would be helpful to have favorites accessible everywhere, IF you bookmark lots of sites.
Tagging is a complex issue we discussed in my grad. course on Intro. to Computers and Info. Science.
For librarians, a plus to tagging is the lack of structure, of hierarchy, means unskilled users will be relying on librarians to sift through the ever increasing amount of "stuff" to find what the user really wants.
A strong negative is that unscrupulous people can use popular tags to increase traffic to their websites. People already do crazy things to manipulate website rankings on search engines or to attract unsuspecting users to porn sites.
One of my assignments for my class was to fine-tune search engine searches to get the results below 100 hits, then analyze the results. One of these 100 hits was actually a porn site that had also scanned an encyclopedia, so Google picked up the legitimate words, but they were deliberately tricking the user to a porn site.
So, tagging is a reality, sure, but not a happy, happy, joy, joy one. It's like this scene in the Indie film Me and You and Everyone We Know, where a single father congratulates himself for using the "it takes a village to raise a child" philosophy to get his sick older son home from school without having to leave work. A co-worker asks how the younger son will get home from school now without the older one to walk him home, and dad panics and tears off to the school to pick up the younger child. The co-worker says:
"Yeah, see, this is why you don't want a village raising your kid...because there's sketchy parts of the village... and some of the villagers are junkies and child molesters."
Tagging is presented here as a really neat feature, but not everyone doing the tagging is a well intentioned, research trained librarian....
Tagging is a complex issue we discussed in my grad. course on Intro. to Computers and Info. Science.
For librarians, a plus to tagging is the lack of structure, of hierarchy, means unskilled users will be relying on librarians to sift through the ever increasing amount of "stuff" to find what the user really wants.
A strong negative is that unscrupulous people can use popular tags to increase traffic to their websites. People already do crazy things to manipulate website rankings on search engines or to attract unsuspecting users to porn sites.
One of my assignments for my class was to fine-tune search engine searches to get the results below 100 hits, then analyze the results. One of these 100 hits was actually a porn site that had also scanned an encyclopedia, so Google picked up the legitimate words, but they were deliberately tricking the user to a porn site.
So, tagging is a reality, sure, but not a happy, happy, joy, joy one. It's like this scene in the Indie film Me and You and Everyone We Know, where a single father congratulates himself for using the "it takes a village to raise a child" philosophy to get his sick older son home from school without having to leave work. A co-worker asks how the younger son will get home from school now without the older one to walk him home, and dad panics and tears off to the school to pick up the younger child. The co-worker says:
"Yeah, see, this is why you don't want a village raising your kid...because there's sketchy parts of the village... and some of the villagers are junkies and child molesters."
Tagging is presented here as a really neat feature, but not everyone doing the tagging is a well intentioned, research trained librarian....
Rollyo, #12
Rollyo has more potential for someone who regularly searches specific sites for a specific type of information than for someone who searches for different types of information or info for which retrieval may increase the broader the search. For this assignment I used Rollyo's "need inspiration" to create the sites to search, and searched for library grand openings. Here is the link:
http://www.rollyo.com/editroll.html?sid=306786
This link will take you to search results, including one for Berkeley Public Library's musical opening gala:
http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?prevsid=306786&q=library+grand+opening&sid=306786
http://www.rollyo.com/editroll.html?sid=306786
This link will take you to search results, including one for Berkeley Public Library's musical opening gala:
http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?prevsid=306786&q=library+grand+opening&sid=306786
That was then, web 2.0 is now.
Found this on one of my feeds on bloglines. Somehow it seems appropriate.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/dayintech_0807
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/dayintech_0807
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