Thing 13: LibraryThing

LibraryThing on 23Things - we are at the apex of thingness.

My catalog is here.

My books span the spectrum of popularity; but they really rank about where I thought they would.

I also looked for local events; and found none.

Overall, LibraryThing is interesting. And it easily fits into a particular category of resources in our Web 2.0 universe. Namely, free space and technology that would be otherwise unaffordable or prohibitively time consuming. Not many libraries/librarians have to the time or resources to make these types of tools from scratch. It is interesting how the boundaries of library are blurred when a library locates many different resources in many different locations around the Web.

Thing 12: Wikis

Wikis I get. Wikis I understand. Wikis I like.

They are a great way to collaborate and build knowledge. The informal nature and ease of access and editing is great for when you need perhaps just a simple piece of information; or you want to share a small piece of information that is part of some larger whole.

In my position, I deal with a lot of technical information. Wikis are a great way to not only share this type of information, but also a very good way to keep technical information very up-to-date.

I edited the frontpage of the 23things pbwiki; and it was fast and easy. Wikis are a great way to share knowledge as well as collect it. They might actually be my favorite Web 2.0 Thing - which is interesting because they are the most Web 2.0-ish Thing technology-wise, but they are quite 2.0 as far as information and knowledge collaboration is concerned.

Thing 11: Social Media

I've done some searching in Digg, etc; and it just seems to be another way to share funny pictures; odd videos; or bizarre textual exchanges on the internet. Sometimes there are links to news stories; but I really expect there to be more news than what is marked. It (social media) appears to be an especially good way to filter out what is important in a timely manner, which is increasingly important as more and more information is released in less and less time. In theory, a good idea. Yet, in reality, the Digg's (for example) are often on fun things, neat things, here-today-gone-tomorrow news items, etc. Social media, for me, becomes too social. It is less about sharing data and information that could potentially become knowledge and more about instant gratification, humor, and other fleeting experiences like staying up on the news of the day. Am I a fan of social media? Not really; but as with other Web 2.0 "things", it will be interesting to see what another librarian who has time and patience can do with it.

Calendar

Experimenting...

Thing 10: Delicious

Delicious is an interesting concept and can lead to increased understanding of the nature of human organization as much as it can keep URLs handy. We investigated social tagging somewhat at school; but Delicious seems much cleaner and, well, more organized than other systems. I have tried many different searches and I cannot seem to duplicate some of the results we ran into in school: Namely, anything weird. You can drill down into Delicious pretty far; even then I cannot find anything too esoteric or arcane. Delicious obviously does not edit tags in any way. So why are there not just weird or oddly personal tags? I am not sure, but I have an idea about tagging. It seems that most individuals tag a web site with what they think will be a good tag, as opposed to tagging it with what pops into their mind or what might actually cause them to remember the contents of the web site by merely glancing the tags. For example, I come across a web site containing imagery/photos that I think are funny. I could easily think of tags that I think will be a good tag and I know these tags would make more sense to others; but I have then over thought my own tags and thought about my tags as perceived by others. This quickly moves into ideas about determining what tags are useful (or most useful) and authority over tags. What if I tag photographs of apples as bananas? I guess I like authoritative determinations of aboutness, even if social tagging can have its benefits. This probably has to do with the way I search for things, research things, and save/store things: I would much rather interact with the data/information itself then what others might label it. I guess I am like a professional chef who doesn't want input from a novice; or like a professional athlete who does not want advice from a novice athlete. Yes, it is possible on special occasions that an amatuer might have something to offer a professional; but if they frequently do, why did I go to library school? and what does that say about the content and instruction in library school?
So, how would I use Delicious (and tools like it)? I would probably make it available to patrons because I understand they might want it; but I would not really use it that much myself - perhaps in the future I might; because I forecast that it will become more and more authoritative.

Thing 9: Sharing

The idea of a share-able database is interesting. I can see more uses arising for that than another photo sharing opportunity, because, perhaps, about of half of Web 2.0 is about sharing photographs. Visual imagery seems to be a big part of the 2.0 aspect.

I don't know that I would use the Lazybase type of tool for anything in my personal life. I would not have that much to populate a database with; and what I could possibly put in a database, I don't think I would want to share via the internet.

For library, professional use, a Lazybase type of tool could be put to use to share information with patrons. It could be a good place to share noteworthy books, books centered on a theme, or even new books.