Week 12 readings

Weblogs are simply blogs (websites) that has grown full-bloom since the late 90s as a new way of communicating thoughts, opinions, ideas, resources and news. These blogs are updated individually with postings and entries which are dated and have headings with keywords. In this article by Reichardt and Harder, these authors address librarian science and technology, highlighting topics such as team and project management, reference, current awareness and currents events/issues, and the librarian whoi s a blog mentor for students. Basically, a blog is a replica of a paper diary, newspaper and/or address book in one. It is really a social software that surprises me in that is is free with an abundance of information. How can one get all this great information nothing? How can the creator of blogs offer all this information and pay so little for it? These are my muddiest points this week.

Wiki is an online encyclopedia used by many patrons which helps them make good choices and decisions in matters, in life. It is used to manage a library instruction program especially by librarians to manage their part. When you share knowledge, whether by dialogue/monologue, you are collaborating resources and obtaining better information that you and another have shared and put together, gaining a greater understanding at the end of the day. With Wiki, you can share information by editing text documents and by attaching files. Library instruction wikis are used to share knowledge and create resourses such as handouts and guides.

Creating the academic library folksonomy was quite interesting to read. Sometimes, I cannot find articles or documents that I have saved and cannot remember where I placed them electronically. So, this will be handy for me, personally, and will be handy as a future librarian. The gist of this article is to put social tags to work especially in the library. These tags allow one to create bookmarks (tags) for websites and categorically save them online. Sites like del.icio.us allow individuals to share tags for greater resources using the category headings. This collaboration is called "folksonomy" which was created by normal, everyday folk. The library is said to be a place for discovery. I feel I have the world at my fingertips when I am in the library. I can travel and make all kinds of discoveries in the library!

Lastly, I enjoyed the video "Jimmy Wales: How a ragtag band created Wikipedia". Wales, too, had a dream! His vision was to assemble legions of volunteer participation and contributors, giving them methods for collaborating. In this process, Wales created the self-organizing, multilingual encyclopedia of all times. This legion of volunteers was called "a ragtag band of volunteers" and are the web servers. Wales debunked negativity and stood on the premises of neutral points of view which was non-negotiable or non-debatable. Wales' video was easy to listen to and it was most humorous. He, too, had a dream which he fulfilled. It was interesting to learn that 2 million articles in languages are used by Wikipedia where only 1/3 is in english. The ragtag band keeps in close contact with each other constantly doing the bulk of this site. Wikipedia is listed in the top 50 websites and only costs $5k monthly.

Everyone enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday!

Connie Williams