Get your hands dirty in the wiki sandbox

The beauty of Wiki is its editable. Everyone can contribute and build this online community. This would be a great tool for faculty learning community. Librarians could create a learning community and invite faculty and students to participate.

I once suggested my husband use blog for the Astrobiology group he organized. Unfortunately, he complained that it requires sign-in and creation of new account. Faculty won't do that. Now I have a better tool to recommend to his group -- Wiki! That way they could post videos of their regular discussion online, extend their discussion to outside group meetings (adding entries to their wiki), and send their wiki to people in the world who might have a insight on Astrobiology (Google can do that I believe). You know what, actually I am kinda interested in creating one for them. Oh well, I need to learn more about wiki before making any promises :)

Free web applications

Among the many free web applications, I think Google Docs would be really useful for both students and educators. I am just concerned who has the rights to have access to the uploaded files that stay in Google Docs' server. I guess I just need to read their policy stuff. Also I like Google geography stuff. I believe I am the only one on earth who gets lost all the time. (some off topic words: I still remember that when I was in D.C. for ALA annual, I literally passed by my hotel four times. One time I was lucky since the door man who worked in the hotel saw me in the street (he was pulling out his car from a meter) and finally showed me the direction and it was around 10pm. Oh well, come back to the free applications. I don't like MS but I really enjoy the Windows Live. I posted my blogs, photo albums, etc. all in one place. Also you don't need to pay to have album sets.

Search Tool

It is really cool to create my own search rolls since I am an online shopper (my daughter hates in-store shopping with me so I have to find ways to shop). As I mentioned earlier we love food, travel, and kids. Now I can create some search rolls in these categories and then do federated search. Not sure if libraries can use this to create search rolls of subject-specific databases and then come up with our own federated search tool. I guess the proxy authentication may get in the way. Wait, let me try it ... oh well, too good to be true :( But it doesn't hurt to try. BTW, the link to my Rolly searchroll is http://rollyo.com/nextgenlib/rollyme/

Gettin' wiki with it!

This time I approached to my lesson a little bit different. I watched the "plain English" video first -- What an amazing video! It helps me understand Wiki visually.

I like the Library Success wiki which covers a whole lot of information related to my job. The BizWiki is more friendly looking. It is nice to see a librarian's picture and know when he is online for questions. It shows that he is very approachable and wanted to help.

Do My Own Library Thing -- Experimenting first

Long time no see my web 2.0 blog. I finally got some time to continue exploring the fun web 2.0 world. I love the Library Thing so much. The search tool is very easy to use and it searches in my favorite online "bookstore" -- Amazon.com. I also like the tag tool. It is really easy to create and edit tags and tag clouds in here. I felt that it is really helpful that I completed the tagging lesson before the Library Thing and now I have a clearer idea about tagging and tag clouds. I love books about travel, food, fashion, and parenting. It is engrossing to read other people's comments on books that I have selected. I also like the group feature they have. I just need to take more time to play with the Library Thing and recommend this tool to my non-librarian friends.BTW, the URL to My LibraryThing catalog is http://www.librarything.com/catalog/nextgenlib

Several things I found from the Library Thing related to life and work. For example, the tags that user created would help other people find books on the same subject. Review and comments posted by users would help people select books. In addition, Groups is a nice space for readers share experience, books, and more.