Thing 16 - Wikis

I have known about Wikis for a long time now though I have never made any changes to one. I have always had the concept that wikipedia can't be trusted; but I find it great to use when I work on my crossword puzzles. It almost always has the answer to those detail type clues as 'artist of "Prima Ballerina"' or 'star of a (certain) 1937 movie'. The member-type wiki can be a very powerful tool. The Unicorn User Group started one several years ago to discuss solutions to problems that we were all having rather than just posting answers on a listserve or forum. That way, changes could be made as someone discovered something that would work. Also, someone else suggested that we could use a wiki to work on a group project - we didn't, but I can see how that would work.

Thing 15 - Library 2.0 and the future

It's obvious that we are in the middle of something big here, hence all the debate. We are moving from a profession that was all about citing sources to allowing the public to find information on their own and make their own decisions about the validity. While this is a major transition for old-school librarians, the newer, younger staff can embrace it much easier. I feel like I am one of the middle-grounders. I like the organized, everything in its proper place of the old ways; yet I find myself wanting to do more on my own. When I am searching for something, in a new place, or just facing a new experience, I first want to "do it myself"; but I don't mind asking for help if I need it.
So I find myself in the middle of the metadata debate also. At first I agreed that - Yes, we need one thesaurus to cover all topics. Make it easier to find what we need in any format. But the specialized vocabularies are important also. For instance, if you are looking for medical information, you don't want to pull up every situation of that term and have the medical source buried deep in pages and pages of results. So what we need is a happy medium so we can chose if we want a specific source or not.
I am also having some trouble giving up ownership of tags and keywords to the general public. While cataloging still has many old-fashioned terms still in use, I saw the trouble just five of us had in trying to catalog some photographs - and that was with using a specialized art thesaurus. We were all over the place in deciding what the pictures were really about. I still haven't decided if folksomonies are going to help or hinder. ON TO THE FUTURE!

Thing 14 - Technorati

This site overwhelmed me. It's not that I see it as something I will never use - just not right now. First of all, I am not ready to tag my blog and put it out there for the world to see. Secondly, I do not have the time to wade through all the choices that it gives or to even look for favorites. I really don't spend that much time on my computer. But I can see the potential for future use.

Thing 13 - del.icio.us

I didn't sign up for this one - yet. When I first started looking at it, I thought I would not be interested in this at all. My favorite links are for me alone and I really don't care what other people are choosing for their favorites. But the more I looked this over, the more I could see the advantages and ways I could use it. I have already been in several situations where I wish I had my favorites list with me since I hadn't memorized websites that I needed. The site itself gave a few good ideas for using it (of course) and I could find it useful when doing research or group projects at school. At least, if a fellow student mentions it, I will know what they are talking about.

Thing 12 - Rollyo

I agree that this would be very useful for reference or even those who use the internet alot! I don't seem to search in categories often; but I decided to create mine using quilting sites. Then maybe I will look at them more often. Now I will try to add the searchbox. Well, there it is (I'm surprised myself). My rollyo is FJ Quilting Sites.

Thing 11 - LibraryThing

I had heard of this before. We explored it during my cataloging class but I didn't try it. I did put in a few of my favorite titles now (http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=fjack&shelf=list) even though I don't actually have the books at home. (So I will probably go back later to remove them and unsubscribe.) I don't buy or keep books since the library can store them for me. Now, what I need is something like this to keep track of all of our DVD's. Does anyone know of a site like that?

Thing 10 - Online Image Generators

This exercise was fun. I checked out several generators but thought that many of them were too silly. I did like this sketch generator - this is my house. My avatar did take way too much time but I was trying for just the right look. This is me - not at work! Actually it's pretty close to what I look like when I go to the Rendezvous to dance to my favorite band, Nightstreet. I am just missing my dangling earrings and "Harley Davidson" written across the front of my shirt. I was a little disappointed that the whole dance sequence didn't come through but if you click on the picture, there's more. I should add one of Nightstreet's songs as background music.