#12. Wikis 1 (week 7)

This was my first introduction to what a wiki truly is. Prior to this lesson my only experience with wikis was the website wikipedia.org. I love wikipedia, several times a week a will read something, hear something on the radio, or see something on tv and I think, "Man, I wish I knew more about ________." Then I head to the nearest computer type in my search request, and, instant gratification. In five minutes or less I can become an expert on practically anything I want to know.

The only danger of relying on wikis or wikipedia for supplying my information is it can be updated by any one. This allows information on the web almost instantaneously, however, its not always the most accurate information. Other than that one caveat, wikis are a great way to get up to the minute information....as long as we know that the there is a slight chance that the information is completely fictional.

Using wikis in the Library would be a great way for us to gather information and ideas from people around the world. Two heads are better than one, right? Well, with wikis we have the potential to add a whole lot of heads.

#11. Folksonomies (week 7): LibraryThing

I have had a LibraryThing account for a few months now. I love the website, I like the way it allows you to keep tabs on your own book collection, and the recommendations page is very thorough. LibraryThing gives you so many suggestions that you will most likely be able to select a quality book based on the choices that they provide. One of the greatest parts about the site is how easy it is to use.

My other favorite part of this learning experience was seeing the practical application of tagging on the Danbury Public Library website. I think that adding the tagging system into CruzCat would be a great idea. It has the potential to be extremely helpful to people who are doing research in the library; and seeing how much UCSC values undergraduate research, I think that we should push to add this to Cruzcat.

Oh, check out my fancy new widget courtesy of LibraryThing!

#10. Tagging (week 6): Technorati

Success!!!! It took awhile for me to get the right combination of search words, but I was finally able to get Technorati to retrieve my blog. I have to admit, it was a little bit exciting to have a search engine pull up my blog.

I had minimal success with other search engines.

#9. Social Bookmarking (week 6): Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us was pretty straight forward. It seems like a good way to organize bookmarks, and since its on the web, they can be accessed from anywhere, which is nice. Yahoo recently bought Del.icio.us which means that it will be around for awhile and isn't just a passing fad. This is also good.

My favorite part of Del.icio.us the the cloud view that organizes your tags. I am partial to this style of display, because it allows the user to quickly sort out the most popular/relevant tags.

Del.icio.us was a little difficult for me to get into because the layout of the site was not very appealing. It seems like there are so many web tools out there that people claim will save me so much time, organize my stuff for me, or make my life so much easier; but, if I used all of these sites I would never have time for anything else.

Organizing my book marks isn't that important to me, I think the that the real value of sites like Del.icio.us are when they can be applied to academics. This site could be very useful for allowing student to seek out the most recent and up to date information in their field of choice. Finding articles on the latest medical breakthroughs, conservation biology, etc. will be much easier and consequently faster with sites like this.

#8. Second Life (week 5)

Second Life seems very interesting. The article that I read about it predicts that Second Life will not necessarily be revolutionary in regards to changing libraries and the way we use libraries, but rather it is a major step in the that direction. After exploring Second Life a little more, I would have to agree with that notion.

I watched the video from SJSU and was very impressed with how they intended to use second life. I think that using it to enhance the distance learning program is a wonderful use of technology. This has the potential to allow more people to seek higher education.

As far as using second life to enhance libraries, I believe there is promise there. Many of the services that the library offers could potentially be fulfilled in a well designed user friendly environment. However, as a student, there were times when I wanted to go to the library, and thumb through books, study in a quiet space, or get a break from using the computer. All of these activities cannot be done in the virtual world.

I am very interested to see the role that virtual reality programs like Second Life will play in future libraries.

#7. Social Networks 2 (week 5): Set up your MySpace page

So setting up my own own myspace account confirmed my suspicions that myspace sucks. Every single time that I tried to do something on that website I received an error message. I am too frustrated to try to work through it now so I will try again later. Hopefully next time I will have more success.

#6. Social Networks 1 (week 4): Explore MySpace and other networks

I had no idea that there were so many different online social networks out there. The internet is amazing in that you can now find a group of people with almost any common interest on the web.

I am not the biggest fan of social networking. I was boycotting MySpace, but it looks as though the ban will be lifted because of the "23 things". The one thing that I am looking forward to about MySpace is exploring the music section.