#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

So it seems to me that this is the usual philosophical agonising that Librarians undertake about 'the role of the library' and 'the image of the librarian' in a slightly modified form.

My background is public libraries, where generally speaking we were so busy we didn't have time for this, so generally we just left this kind of soul searching and image making to those within the field plenty of free time on their hands. Frankly, the image that librarians were either supposed to have or wanted to have seemed a million miles from my reality then. I seemed to spend all my time sorting out staffing, sorting out complaints, ejecting the unruly, fixing up building and computer problems, squeezing the very last cent out of the book budget, and generally trying to make the library budget perform miracles. Most shifts had acustomer to staff ratio of 50:1, so reference work was a matter of squeezing one query around another, do a bit and leave them with it, do another query, come back to check up. On and on, so that after several hours you brain was just spinning.

So I'm now hardened into the "I don't care about the image/purpose/values" camp, with a general expectation that working under a blazing hail of customer suggestions, demands and anti-social behaviours, you will get the message about what works & doesn't work, what the customers want (and that's a bottomless pit) and do, and battling with the funding body to actually get it for them. I've never had any problem identifying customer desires, the trick is rolling it out to them within the budget and staff workloads. So Web 2.0 (orLibrary 2.0) better be Cost Effective 2.0, with Time Effective 2.0 thrown in, or it ain't going to work.

#17 Playing around with PBWiki

OK, I played around with it, added this Blog to the Favourite Blog's list (UBUTL).

I think there is a lot of potential in Wikis, but can't let the password drift into the wrong hands. Put simply, I think Wikis are the best thing to happen on the Web in quite few years.

Kind of odd trying to remember how to put in HTML code again, I haven't done that in years. MS FrontPage did it all for me, and I forgot the format. You kind of forget just how much formatting goes into these websites.

Now, where is #15.. I think I got distracted out of that by my children. I once wrote down every interruption as I was writing an email. It was frightening, every sentence almost was some distraction. A 5-6 sentence paragraph took me 20 minutes to write.

#16 Wikis..

I have to say I like Wikipedia, primarily because it does a reasonable job of sourcing Web references. We are creatures of our culture, so even the same sentence read by two different people will be taken with different assumptions & interpretations. So really everything is subjective (except maths). However, Wikipedia seems to me to try and go directly to first hand sources and reputable commentary, and kudos to them for that.

However, Im always wary of anonymous or pseudonym publications. If someone is prepared to put their name and reputation on their opinion, I can gauge my respect for that.

Folksonomy

'Folksonomy' tops most irritating list

I'm not surprised. I do like the way English is unregulated and uncontrolled in it's use. New words are simply made up, they rise and fall. But truly there are times when geeks and marketing people should be chained up and beaten with the Oxford Dictionary.

#14 Technorati

Clearly I just don't get this..
After the explosion in junk mail I got from signing up to Flickr and Blogger, I'm a bit wary of signing onto anything else.

However, searching Technorati seems .. well like voyerism.
For example, a search for Hurstville produces (amongst others) http://dorcashan.blogspot.com/2007/06/out-of-ordinary.html

and

http://simply-natalie.livejournal.com/1328.html

why do I ever need to know that.. why do people even write this rubbish.. it is like a consciousness dump. It isn't even well written!

For me, Technorati is really GarbageDumpati.. a search tool for rubbish. Might be a great search tool, but if the entire range of results is rubbish.. well it finds rubbish.

#13 Tagging and del.icio.us

Words that just chill the spine..

"Install buttons now >>"

err.. no thanks. I have enough crap in my registry already.

#12 Rollyo

Fallen a bit behind here, since I've been a triffle unwell this past week. Some sort of gastric thing sucking the energy out of me.

So I started up Rollyo and registered. I got as far as getting a search complilation on 'Hurstville' running, but for the life of me I couldn't get the search to refine the results down to a useful list. I had more trouble trying to limit the results than getting results, and adding extra websites just exacerbated that. An exercise in quantity over relevance..