Readings: Week 14 (12/1)

Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program- This was a very interesting article with a good description of what wikis are and how they can work in a library setting. However, I thought the section the Description of the library instruction program at ETSU was a bit out of place. While the rest of the article discussed wikis specifically, that section started talking more about digital services in general and how to educate users about them. Also they never made clear who the 'users' where when discussing who could make changes to the wiki. Are these people librarians, library patrons or both?

Creating the academic library folksonomy- This article presents a very interesting idea. However, it seems to neglect certain important points. For example it discusses the idea of allowing students access to articles unavailable at their own institutions. But how would that be possible? Wouldn't the student still have to pay to see that information? Also I think the true folksonomy can cause more difficultly in finding resources, as the same item or idea can be known by several different names, which causes trouble.

Jimmy Wales on the birth of Wikipedia- I thought that this was a very interesting lecture. I especially was interested in the way that he referred to Wikipedia more as a community than anything else. I had never thought of Wikipedia in that way. I was also very interested to hear about how they deal with the issue of accuracy and quality control. I am glad to hear that they do not simply rely on the idea of the neutral point of view policy, as many people may not adhere to that policy. I was also surprised by many of the statistics, while these may no longer be completely accurate as the film is several years old, I was surprised at how many people outside of the English speaking countries use the site. I had always assumed it was a more English-centric website.

Weblogs- The first part of this article is a very good introduction to what a blog is and to the history of the medium. The second part provided some interesting ideas about the application of blogs to the library field. The author seemed to put more emphasis on the use in more academic and research libraries. I thought that most of these suggestions were very interesting and worth looking into in many libraries.