Wiki Revisited

Though I still think concept of a wiki, how a community can add and edit all material forming a giant knowledge bank is a wonderful think, I do have an example to add shows the flaws in the current system.



My sister works in a large multinational company providing customers with information on weilding and safety products. She's currently on a project creating a knowledge centre, an intelligent database that provides production information based on how staff answer a set of questions. When justifying the expense of this program with the people with the money one of the questions she faced was "Why should we go to the expense of this program when staff can just look up wikipedia for the information?"



Her explanation was as follows:



She took the example of bottled gas. She noted that bottle sizes and standard colouration for the bottles differed greatly in Australia from the examples given in the article. So a customer refered to this site by staff or staff using this information would then be in error when it came to ordering. They would ask for the wrong sized bottle and when it reached them assume they had the wrong gas.

Wiki's are often seen my many of our customers as their 'one stop shop', but it's just not so. It's good to know that good judgement and research skills are still needed in the age of the computer.

Week 12: Social Networking

I've been a member of Facebook for a while and thought it just a silly nonsense that I filled my tea break with. Sure great for having fun with a few friends but not so useful for seriously keeping in touch.

Then I had a thought. I work mainly in Children and Youth Services. If the kids have been able to dodge the homework or there's nothing good in TV you know where they'll be. Who am I kidding! Their probably doing all three things at the same time! Kids are on there, somewhere waiting to link one more friend to boost their friends list, someone that might have something interesting to say. And don't we have something interesting to say!

You could promote "Your Library" Facebook site on bookmarks, a Internet classes, to schools and anyone who gives you eye contact in the library. They link as a friend, maybe scribble a message on "Your Library" Superwall, feed (or even add to) the fish tank and generally fool around. Through "Your Library" page they will find links to others kids who have become "Your Library" friends. You can create a "Your Library" group, the kids now belong to a community of kids who all go to "Your Library" .

Then! When you want to promote an activity you create an event, add a link to the council website with all the details and send it to everyone of "Your Library" friends. No emails that change every six month, so no updating contact lists and no issues with privacy.


You can run competitions through Facebook. There's already a option to create a Trivia competition, it could be modified for trivia on any subject. You could have a lucky friend competition or invite kids to write something on your Superwall for prizes. You can send them birthday messages and let them know their worth a poke or two. With a little imagination, a little time and almost no money you could have flourishing group of "Your Library" friends, putting you in touch with even more kids exponentially!

Facebooks puts you in touch and keeps you in touch with those people who want to be in contact with you. Sounds super exciting. Can't wait to try it out for myself.

Online applicatins

I've had some fun with a few of the online applications, particularly picnik. We don't have a strong photo editing program here at work so I found Picnik, in particular, a revelation.

I do love that it links to Flickr so well. I understand that Flickr also has photo editing, but Picnik is very user friendly and just my speed.

RSS rethink

Okay, after all my ranting a few blogs ago I better confess, I now really appreciate my Google reader.

I've added ABC news as well as the SMH. I have all my workmates Library Learning blogs on there as well as my outside of work blogs (I didn't want to say "friends' bogs"). It's there on my igoogle page which at home is homepage so I don't need to go anywhere else to keep in touch.

So...I can honestly say...without reservation...that I like RSS.

Week 10 Mashups

And here is my image. I like anything with graphics so Big huge labs was fun. There are certianly lots of wonderful programs out there. I particularly liked the US Public Library finder. Wouldn't that be great on the council website with all the libraries and other council sites of interest?

The London Map reminded me of all that local history primary source stuff that you don't want people playing with the real items but you want accessible. Linked to a map it's easy to see was material is useful to what area instantly, really handy when you have a high schoolers local studies assignments.

The Big Huge Lab stuff would be great for the creation of promotional material and I'll try and keep it in mind for next time I have posters to make. I stuck it into del.icio.us just in case.

And the mashup I found?

Mapsdango with its view of Fairfield.

Week 8 Answer boards

I've never had much luck with answer board personally. The answers provided are vague and based on personal opinion...hey I can do that! I want something concrete here! I guess that could be a good reason to get involved, providing good quality info. But I already have enough questions here at work, why would I want to go out in my spare time and find more?


Anyway for the sake of the course here is a question I answered. There is certianly a variety of topics out there.

I can see it being another way our customers can get in touch with us. 'Ask a Librarian' service at some libraries are similar to an answerboard service, though the link above is to one that is commited to providing a staff member in real time to chat to. If the library ran an answer board service that would have to be commited to replying within a set amount of time (24 hours) otherwise questions could go unanswered until it was too late.

I is an outreach, a way of contacting potential customers that may not normally think of the library. But do I anwer questions from all over the world in the hope of attracting a local customer? Are local customers relevant if I can show that I am answering questions from library resources? I would think council would appreciate it if I spent their time and resources on their residence.

Consider is there a role for your library in “slamming the boards”? In what ways might your customers like to rate or review items in the collection or services you offer?

I wonder if council would allow me the Internet time to just flit around on the answer boards like this? It does get the libraries name out there, even if it isn't to library customers (one question answered by a librarian in Hawaii). Getting back to a more local service I think it could be very good to have our service directly rated like those on the answer board. It's often hard to determine if your solution has been benefitial to the customer. On an answer board it's annonymous and they can feel free to be more honest.

As for items within our collections I like the ideas shown in the wiki sections of this course. Customers were encouraged to write reviews on the books, a star system could be added to that to score the materials. As an answer board is not linked directly to the item then the ratings would not be useful to other customers...though still useful us. :-)

Week 7: Library Thing

Here 's my Library thing page, only the five books.



It's cute and I would think that for book clubs or recommending new titles to a patrons it could be useful, but couldn't I do that in other ways without all the effort of becoming a member? I'm going to have to find out what other people have written for this one.



I could certianly spend years putting my personal collection on there, but professionally I wouldn't think of using it.

Week 7: Tagging

Del.icio.us is a good thing. One place that everyone can get access where all those useful URL's can live.

We often get emails saying "...this site is great, check it out..." or "...we had an assignment, this site was good...". And they are good sites, but even if you do save it into your favourites (and I'm not one to use favourites much) you can never find them when it's required.

A library wide del.icio.us account, a one stop shop for all library staff to add and use. If we wanted to be fancy we could even use dewey or LC subject headings for bundle tags to keep a standard that everyone would understand.

It's very easy to see how del.icio.us would be very useful in the library.