wikis

The booklovers wiki maintained by the princeton public library is interesting, but there aren't very many reviews and most of the books that are reviewed only have one. It would be better if there were more reviews by more people, but that comes with time. For instance, there were only two science fiction books reviewed on the etnire site.

The Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki seemed to me to be more like what a wiki should be like. The booklovers wiki seemed more like a weblog while the Best Practices Wiki contains more information, still editable by anyone in the community, but less like a collection of opinion pieces. This was more like information sharing about practical and tried suggestions and ideas as well as conversation about certain aspects of library service.

I would think that a wiki like this would be very helpful for librarians. A quick and easy way to share success, pitfalls, and just general information with each other in a structured and organized environment.

The SJCPL wiki was a combination of the two wikis already mentioned, information about the county, and a FAQ about questions that get asked of the reference librarian. This seemed like a particularly good site for a SJC citizen as opposed to just librarians. I would think that a site like this would get a lot of traffic from the community and would be very helpful for people who might not be able to get to the library, people who have recently moved there, and people who might be unsure about what the library offers.

the future of libraries

Well, I enjoyed the practical suggestions that people made for learning to integrate with a changing and shifting future. What Miller said in his article about not shifting quickly with every trend makes a good point about the unstable nature of technology. What seems so common and popular today, may be gone tomorrow with something completely different to replace it. So, when I read articles like the one by Schultz, I am excited at the thought of being able to be so integrated with the culture, but wary about charting a course to her vision of the future. What I do admire about her vision is its dedication to meeting people where they are. I just think that where people are in this day and age changes so quickly that we are not entirely sure where we are. That's why I liked Reimer's article about metadata and being able to better utilize bibliographic information. I can see the concrete benefits of his suggestions. I'm not sure what I think library 2.0 is. Not necessarily something as experiential as what Schultz envisions, but something that utilizes Reimers ideals about information sharing.

technorati

Well, I didn't find hardly any learning 2.0 blogs despite the many blogs that the site listed. The directory seemed to say it all for me: entertainment is mostly what the blog is about with business running it a close second. Nothing wrong with that. Obviously, science, technology, and politics are also a signficant part of the blogosphere, but it seems that thus far, the people who have taken the most energy to make sure that their blog is being spread around are those in the entertainment industry.

Now, that does not meant that other kinds of blogs do not exist, perhaps merely that they are not part of technorati. So, when everyone starts adding technorati tags to their posts, they will become a part of the system. I still struggle with using blogs as sources of reliable information, but it is the way of the future, and if nothing else it obviously stimulates a lot of conversation. Personally I am not sure that I find their search engine to be that good, but the way that individuals label or tag their blogs is probably as responsible for that as anything. So, not only do librarians and those who are publishing educational blogs need to be posting good information, but they need to be taking the time to tag and label it properly so it can be found easily.

delicious

I can see a use for it. It seems to combine together a lot of different minds and that should at least give balance to an issue or inquiry if nothing else. The sheer amount of information can seem a bit daunting, but learning to organize and sift through the information is the job a librarian.

One thing that I don find a little bit strange about social networking sites, is that even when relaying "academic" information or information about library blogs, they reveal more of a personal nature than other types of information sites. For instance, when I did some looking at some of the popular tags, I was surprised at the amount of personal information that people revealed on their blogs. Does the informalness of the setting detract from the helpful information that it provides? Probably not, but it can be distracting. I find myself doing so much skimming looking for links when I visit sites like this. I don't know if I like that.

rollyo

Okay, I'm struggling with figuring out why this search tool is more effective than google. I suppose that using this tool would help eliminate sites that contain erroneous or badly organized information, but you still have to trust the person who created the rollyo to have done his/her homework, so I would still review the site for accuracy before trusting it.

There can't be a rollyo for every search that someone would want to perform. For instance, I was researching popular restaurants in a certain downtown block of St. Louis, MO for work, and there isn't a rollyo for that. First, you would need to ascertain whether or not a rollyo exists for a particular topic before it can be used. Frankly, unless a roll can be found quickly it doesn't seem worth it to try and locate one and use it to search.

Also, the site did not work very well for me. I received an error message every time I tried to conduct a search.

One way I could see a site like this being useful would be to create rollyos for homework/homework help, science fair projects, things like that.

library thing

Very much like the virtual bookshelf in Facebook except this offers a lot more than just the covers of books you like. Recommended readings, quick links to places it can be bought, or the LOC for more information. If you tell it where you are located, it will even pop-up local resources to buy the book or a listing of local libraries that may have it.

The recommended reads based on "The Poems of Charlotte Smith" were a little disappointing since it only recommended other books by her, but that is a narrow field and searching for someone a little more mainstream might yield better results.

There are also different interest based groups you can join and an online discussion page. Overall, I like it. I'll have to add it to my favorites.

www.librarything.com/catalog/rachelrconner

image generator

I don't think I really understand this since most of things seemed to be a bit silly, but I could see how teens would want to ask questions about how these. My big concern would be to make sure that virus protection is running strong before sending people out to look for image generators, but that's just me.

I tried a site http://www.jellymuffin.com/ but it was terrible. Mashable worked a lot better for me and had more mature looking options available. This wasn't an online generator itself, but recommended different sites for what it was you're trying to do.

I chose the option to create a movie poster. It didn't turn out very well since I didn't have the right size image, but I get the point. http://bighugelabs.com/