Thing 18: Wikis

Wikis were not as familiar to me as I thought they were. I knew about Wikipedia and have used it sometimes as a starting place when researching a particular subject. I also knew they were similar to blogs but did not understand the difference.

The practice page for wikis was wonderful! This was a practical, hands-on way to learn. I usually must do something myself in order to learn how it is done. I really enjoyed thing 18.

Thing 17: LibWorm

I have heard of LibWorm but not really known what it was. While visiting the site, I subscribed to a feed in Google Reader so that I can keep up with the latest on the tag I chose. I did a few searches and it was alright but seemed like a lot to sift through. Liking the fact that it is specific to library interests. I put in our library's name under a phrase search and got zero results. Depending on what kind of info I obtain from the feed I subscribed to, this may prove to be a good place for specific searches related to new technology for libraries.

Library Thing

Library Thing is number 16 in our quest of knowledge! I am a techie that loves reading, so someone else had to show me this site about 3 years ago. I am a member and I love it! I don't do a lot of socializing on here but this is how I keep up with the books I own. I am also an Early Reviewer and have snagged 4 books to date. There are many ways to find books that may interest you here, ways to find people with your interests, and review books you have in your home library or books you have read.

I occasionally check out the many postings here and enjoy hearing others reading experiences, likes and dislikes about what they read. I also see what my one far away friend has read and reviewed recently. Very enjoyable site. If you want to see my library, look for rjmoren.

Digg: Thing 15

This will definitely become a favorite! I really enjoy catching up with the news online and this site is so easy to navigate. I was able to quickly find what I was looking for. The subject headings are perfect! I will not go so far as to create an account on this one, but it will be worth visiting often.

Delicious

Thing 14? I think. I think I will like this site a lot. I can see the benefit of being able to pull up my bookmarks from any computer. My husband has wanted something like this for a while. It is frustrating to be on the road and not be able to find a site you need. Last year, for example, we were on vacation and realized we had not paid an important bill before we left and it would come due while we were gone. We brought my laptop on the trip but the bookmark was on the desktop in the home office. We ended up calling the company and paying by phone, not a big deal but had we known we could save our bookmarks via Delicious, life would have been simpler that day.

I did go through all steps to add buttons and import my bookmarks. Very easy to do, seems easy to navigate. I have not explored tagging my bookmarks yet but may get to that soon.

My page is here: http://delicious.com/rjmoren

Tagging

Tagging is familiar to me as it is used on Facebook, Flickr, and Library Thing. These are the sites I tag currently. Should it be used in the library? It seems too open to me for use in the library, but that is probably me being stuck in the dark ages of Dewey Decimal. Our ILS has recently partnered with Library Thing and so we may be exploring tags for our OPAC in the near future. I am on the fence really with the whole issue of tagging. At this point, I don't feel that it should be encouraged in a library setting.