HARNESSING THE HIVE: SOCIAL NETWORKS AND LIBRARIES
Speakers:
Matthew Bejune, Digital Reference Services Coordinator, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
Meredith Farkas, Distance Learning Librarian, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont
Tim Spaulding, Founder & Developer, LibraryThing, Portland, Minnesota
Social networking such as YouTube, Facebook, flickr, cell texting, and podcasting are second nature to youth, who integrate these technologies into daily life in unexpected ways. Panelists discussed this rapidly growing phenomenon and presented examples of innovative outreach and reference services that utilize social software such as tagging, blogging and wikis to reach online users.
-Wikis: most famous Wikipedia defines it as “A wiki (sometimes wiki wiki) is a web application designed to allow multiple authors to add, remove, and edit content.
To learn more about Wikis in Libraries consult:
-the upcoming article in the September 2007 issue of Information Technology and Libraries: Bejune, Matthew M. (2007) “Wikis in Libraries.” Information Technology and Libraries, 26(3), 27-39.
-http://librarywikis.pbwiki.com/
-Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki http://www.libsuccess.org/ maintained by Meredith Farkas, Queen of Wikis.
- Look at her blog at Information Wants to Be Free http://meredith.wolfwater.com/
LibraryThing, developed by Tim Spalding, is an online service to help people catalog their books. You can edit your information, search and sort it, “tag” books with your own subjects, or use the Library of Congress and Dewey systems to organize your collection. http://www.librarything.com/
LCPL Reference has developed the following:
BLOGS-
http://referencetoday.blogspot.com/
http://businesslines.blogspot.com/
http://regionroots.blogspot.com/
flickr-
http://www.flickr.com/
WIKIS-
lcplref wiki coming soon!
Take a look at some of the links and let me know what you think. Even the national political race is being affected by social networks. Did any of you watch CNN's YouTube Questions for the Democratic Candidates last week?
3 comments:
Does our new set-up allow more video streaming (or any) and can patrons download stuff onto youtube (for example) from here?
Ha! Did I watch the YouTube debate - LOL!
YouTube doesn't sit well with dial-up access so I have to sneak it on the sly from the LCPL computers! (Just kidding)
But - These "toys" are all well and fine. Some can have real good use in libraryland. Other applications - we just need to be aware that they exist, but it may just not have a place in the library for us, now. Maybe later, though. For example, if you have personal or professional blog, are you still posting?
Here's something fun when it comes to LibraryThing - you don't have to classify by Dewey. A library in Arizona has taken this to heart and has organized their shelves by Subject & Author. (Think: Cooking -- Dean, Cooking -- Ray, etc) Use the card catalog to look up the title, author, etc. If you used our catalog, the call number would be 641.xxxx DEAN. Looking at AZ's catalog, you'd see the call number Cooking -- Dean.
See more about BISAC here: http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2007/07/raising-arizona.html
The Democratic "Debate" with the YouTube questions showed how much we value entertainment over content in almost every arena of public life. While some of the questions were thoughtful, many were provocative and some simply silly. Ditto with some of the answers. You can tell who's playing to the audience. Since I am not connected to the internet at home, I don't spend my home time reading from a screen but from a book or newspaper. Maybe everyone should try to spend some time that way instead of finding new websites to stare at. Perhaps I should just sign myself "the Luddite."
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