Reading Notes Dec. 1, 2009

Using a Wiki to Manage a Library Instruction Program
This article discusses a program to integrate wikis into library instruction at the library at East Tennessee State University, where the author is employed as reference librarian -- wikis are used to plan and expand on library instruction sessions -- professors can expand on specific questions they have during information sessions, or can help students to specify assignments for an instruction session.
Also, wikis can be used as a collaborative tool for exchanging information among instruction librarians. In addition, the article includes some helpful links to commercial sites with software allowing you to create your own wiki, as well as some background literature on wikis.

Creating the Academic Library Folksonomy

The article discusses how users can create folksonomy -- taxonomies of keywords created and shared by lots of users. Such folksonomies can help catalog useful internet sites, and integrate these folksonomies into academic libraries. This can provide quality indices of web sites, and also bring "grey" literature to light. The article gives a few examples of libraries that are trying out social tagging, f.e. the University of Pennsylvania, or Stanford University. Services uch as delicio or citeulike allow users to share these tags.

The article also discusses very briefly some of the risks and concerns about social tagging, for example spagging (spam tagging), or the variation of tags and the lack of controlled vocabulary. There are other concerns, not mentioned by the article, for example that tagging might provide institutions with a rationale to cut cataloging jobs, a discussion which has been held at the LC for a while, and an ongoing discussion whether or not it is useful to have controlled vocabularies to describe collections.

Weblogs: Their Use and Application in Science and Technology Libraries

Discusses the history of weblogs beginning in the early 1990s. Web logs are web sites that resemble personal journals, which allow visitors to comment on entries, and also include an archive of past weblogs. The authors highlight that web logs really took off in the late 1990s, when software package became available that allow users to build their own blogs. The article highlights web logs as a collaborative tool in science and technology libraries, which has some advatages over, for example email, since it is more easily searchable and can be organized according to specific subjects. RSS feeds can serve as a reminder to users to visit blogs. The article also explores reference blogs as an alternative to email. In blog instruction, librarians can have an important function, and train students in setting up and maintaining blogs. The article is from 2004 -- since then, many libraries have integrated blogs into their services..

Wikipedia

Interview with Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia -- the question here is to what extent the ideal of wikipedia matches the reality -- there was an article in Times Magazine, which Donna Guerin recommended for our LIS 2000 class, about some of the discrepancies: Wikipedia: A Victim of Its Own Success?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1924492-1,00.html

These discrepancies suggest to take Jimmy Wales claims about wikipedia as this diverse, global, bottom-up project with a grain of salt, and rather reflect about persistent hierarchies in the way knowledge is created and organized.