Library 2.0 Will Take Us to a New Place

I ended up reading all five articles and I'm glad I did, because I might not have read the last article which was my favorite. I have read a bit in the past about library 2.0 and not understood it very well, but Tom Storey described it very well. Michael Stephens article was great! I even learned a new word: meme. I had to look it up as I didn't know what it meant. Here's a link to Wikipedia's definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme. I liked how he talked about how "this" librarian talks to the patrons who use the library or would like to use the library and gets their input as to how the library could be improved or made better for them. I also appreciated these sentiments: "This librarian does not buy technology for the sake of technology. “Techno-worship” does not exist here. Without a firm foundation in the mission and goals of the institution, new technologies are not implemented for the sake of coolness and status." Right on! Rick Anderson's article Away From the "Icebergs" seemed very arch to me and I don't agree that our libraries are circulating less than before. Maybe at the University of Arizona in Reno but not at our libraries! Chip Nilges article seemed mostly to be tooting OCLC's horn and was very hard to read. Probably because he was talking about many things I don't understand! I enjoyed John Riemer's article with its discussion of meta data and how it can improve our libraries and the success rate of our patrons using the catalog; I completely agree. And so we come to my favorite article Dr. Wendy Schultz's To a Temporary Place in Time... I'm looking forward to her version of library 4.0; especially the comfy chairs and the single malt scotch!

Rollyo or Google Custom

I used the search term "branch locations" in Rollyo and came up with pages and pages of results that listed Seattle Public but none of the other libraries. I spent quite a lot of time going page to page and not finding anything but Seattle Public. I changed the search terms to "library branch locations" and though the ads moved to the top of the page rather than being interpersed, there were still no results other than Seattle Public. I then went over to Google custom and tried the search terms "branch locations" and on the first page of results King County, Sno-Isle and Seattle Public showed up. I looked through about 18 pages and Tacoma Public did not show up. I definitely liked the look of Google custom much better than Rollyo and the results were much better! I thought the Rollyo page was much too cluttered.

I created my own search engine in Google custom and then tried it out. It worked great! What a fun thing to do and I can see some real advantages to using a limited set of web pages. It seems a little like Bloglines but with a much narrower scope. It's much easier to go through the results when you have just a few websites!

Here's the link to my search engine:

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004868165741088363653%3Aywztfz3wf7e

Playing Around in South Park Land

What a fun way to waste some time! I had a hard time choosing all the elements that I wanted to include in the South Park figure - look kind of like myself or Kenny? Hard decision but finally went for something like myself.

Also, using the Italian name generator I created an Italian name for myself for when I go to Italy in ten days:

Your Italian Name Is...

Assunta Bianchi

What's" Your Italian Name?

For now arrivederci!

Wild Wiki

It does seem that wikis could become quite wild, depending on who was changing the page. I enjoyed browsing through several libraries wikis, as well as the Book Lover's - there are some good books suggested there. I was fascinated by wiki wars and how some pages can ban people from changing a page if they become too disagreeable. I think it's interesting that most of the library wikis have a link to the page they want you to read, but you can't change that page - just the wiki. I guess that's one way to keep control of content. As far as the our library goes I'd like to see a wiki with book suggestions for children's librarians. I also like Sarah's idea of having a wiki for each branch; that would have been helpful with the snow!