Week 13 Reading Notes

What Makes Social Media Tick (Blossom, J.)

• Unable to access this article by the prescribed hyperlink or by searching PittCat+.

Using a Wiki to Manage a Library Instruction Program (Allan, C.)

• I would be curious to know what’s more common when it comes to where people are sharing ideas in the working environment: wikis or Google Docs? I’ve personally had more experience with Google Docs and much prefer it to using wikis on Blackboard.
• Whether using wikis or Google Docs, these tools are extremely useful for people to work together without meeting in-person (or meeting in-person fewer times). In my group strategic plan group for LIS 2700 this semester, we used Google Docs, and this made our handful of in-person meetings very efficient.
• The one danger of using wikis or Google Docs to share information, is that it many not be fully understood by all of the users. For example, If one user wrote up instructions on how to use a program, another user may not understand those instructions because the language or processes used don’t make sense to them. I’ve had experience with this, and in retrospect, I would’ve used Jing to make tutorial videos rather than write out the instructions.

Creating the Academic Library Folksonomy (Arch, X.)

• I would say that libraries should only use tagging if they do so in such a way that is useful to and understood by their patrons. Otherwise it’s useless.
• del.icio.us is used by so many people—it’s great that Stanford has added a del.icio.us module for social tagging. Using something that works well for everyone is usually better than creating something new. However, I do wonder if del.icio.us would be more useful in a public library than an academic one.

TED Talk: How a Ragtag Band Created Wikipedia (Wales, J.)

• The fact that Wikipedia is so successful yet is run by virtually an all-volunteer staff can be very appealing to libraries (which also rely on volunteers), particularly in these tough economic times. Not necessarily comparable, but certainly interesting.
• Very interesting that the German Wikipedia was declared as better quality than the German Encarta. I know that we’ve had some debate over Wikipedia’s authority and quality, and I think this is one great example of how Wikipedia does have some level of quality control.
• As prescribed by ALA, libraries do have a neutral point of view. However, this is not always known or believed (such as patrons who attempt to have certain materials banned). Should this neutral point of view be highlighted in libraries’ mission or vision statements or core values?