#16: Lions and Tigers and...

...well, YOU know.

Since we're supposed to talk about wikis, here's one that I consider an excellent example of this concept: The Encyclopedia of Life. This site aspires to be nothing less than a catalog of every living species on earth, with all content supplied by independent contributors. The site is still very much in the formative stages, so don't bother looking up any of the big mammalian species. However, the EoL is constantly growing by leaps and bounds, and demonstrates that a community-run wiki can be well-run, factually accurate, and a valuable resource.

As for the negative aspect of wikis, here's a direct quote from the Library Success site:

Because of vandalism problems, e-mail confirmation is now required.

That pretty much sums things up.

How To Recognize Different Types of Trees From a Very Long Ways Away

I have glanced through two of the linked articles on the Library 2.0 concept, because I am a good and obedient student. I liked Rick Anderson's comment about the diminishing need to maintain a "just in case" collection. I.e., hanging on to that one ratty, torn-up, underlined, dog-chewed, published-in-1962 book about underwater Tibetan basket-weaving, just because ONE PATRON might want it one day and we wouldn't have it and we'd have to, I don't know, commit ritual suicide or something. Nowadays we could just run an search for underwater Tibetan basket-weaving. And probably come up with entire online communities devoted to the subject.

I would also like to share Michael Stephens' comment on the "Librarian 2.0": "This librarian does not buy technology for the sake of technology. “Techno-worship” does not exist here." It's good to be open to new technologies, seeing as how they're not going to go away. (Or, if they are, it'll just mean they get replaced with something even newer.) However, it's not sound judgment to believe that anything new and trendy and Internet-related is automatically something we should try. Sometimes a trend is just a trend. Libraries back in the early 80s would've looked pretty silly if they'd invested heavily in building a collection of Betamax videocassettes.

(And if you're too young to remember Betamax, kindly come closer to my rocking chair so I can wallop you with my cane.)

Who watches the watchmen? Or their blogs?

Visited Technorati. Ran search for "Learning 2.0". Found blog called Hans On Experience. Appreciated pun.

Apparently talking like Rorshach today. Comment if you get that reference.

Lucky 13?

(Not a very clever title, true. I concede that I am off my game today.)

Anyway, here we are at Step #13, Del.icio.us. I watched the ottergroup video and so on. I suppose I see how this would be a useful way to organize bookmarks if you had an account. Probably more efficient than my personal method of keeping a plain ol' word doc filled with semi-random lists of web sites that I might conceivably want to re-visit someday. (As well as the standard Favorites list of stuff I visit daily/weekly, like Jabootu.) But without an account, it seems no different from a standard search engine, really.

Although there is the factor that you can tell whether a particular link is "popular" or not. But that's only an advantage if you trust the opinions of random strangers.

As metal as all that, eh?

So. Step #12, MySpace. I already knew Metallica (my favorite band) had a MySpace page, but I had yet to visit it. Ergo, after first glancing at the main MySpace page (where I could have watched a video featuring a monkey on a motorcyle but did not), I searched for their official band page. Here it is:

http://www.myspace.com/metallica

And I discovered that...it has exactly the same information as their web site, which I check anyway, only the MySpace page is uglier, more poorly organized and has more ads.

It did, however, contain this memorable quote from a MySpace member, verbatim:

i still dont know what metallica is. and what does headbonging mean?

...Right, then.

Revenge of the Bride of LibraryThing (In 3-D)

I must say that LibraryThing has probably been my favorite of the 2.0 assignments/discoveries so far. It should be fairly obvious to the casual viewer that I've got samples from my collection displayed along the right side of the page. But I obey the letter of the law and link to it here, thusly:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/M_C_R

This could be a useful way to promote books that don't get into library collections typically, seeing as how they're not mega-mondo-bestsellers written by people with names like "Grisham" or "Patterson". (Not that I'm dissing either of those authors.) (As such.) But I do see that a few of the books in my collection don't have a lot of shared readership; I shall see about making it my goal to change that.

Productivity Enhancers, AKA Image Generators.

Courtesy of the Computer Error Message generator.

...OK, this is fun.