Wiki-wiki-wiki (Thing 10)

The Commoncraft on wikis was informative, a good primer. My only previous wiki experience was with Wikipedia entries I came across occasionally in Google searches.

The first thing that popped into my head when I watched the Wiki video was this: I wish they would have had Wikis in 1996 when my friend and I co-wrote "BC for Dummies." After our first year of teaching, we wrote a manual for the next year's newbies that told them of things like how long it really took to get that first paycheck, which items were not-to-miss in the school cafeteria, and who to talk to to get things fixed quickly. We put a lot of effort into it, but once it was "published" (photocopied), it was difficult to keep up-to-date. Yet it was a good enough resource that veteran teachers wanted to get their hands on a copy of it. A wiki would have allowed hints and tricks to be shared by anyone, and anyone could easily have benefited from it.

After that nostalgic trip, I took a look at some real wikis.

The first wiki I took a look at was Library Success. Right away, I noticed a problem--a lot of the information, particularly about conferences, is outdated. There seem to be a lot of phrases like "2006 SLA Annual conference will be held in Baltimore, MD, June 2006." As a potential user of a wiki, that would throw up red flags for me right away. I suppose it's because everyone is a writer but there are no editors to check up on things, but when I visit a website with outdated information, I'm always hesitant to believe much of what it says.

On the other hand, the section on "Social Networking Software" includes links to various libraries that are using such software. I can see where this would be useful, as anyone using these types of applications could add their name to the list.

The Blogging Libraries wiki led me to this interesting blog, which is exploring some of the same things we are in 23Things: http://newtrierlibrary.blogspot.com/ Their header: Let's begin a discussion of powerful web tools that may change the way we teach and learn.

I looked at several wikis, including the 23Things and MN150 wikis, but I really didn't see that I had anything useful to add, so I just played around with the Meta Sandbox.

I think wikis can be useful, but unless I happen upon one that I'm knowledgeable enough to add to, or am a member of a group creating one, I think they're going to be a mostly "read-only" endeavor for me.

Edited a few minutes later: I did a quick Google search on "travel wiki" and found http://wikitravel.org. I went down through the levels until I found something I was familiar with, and I edited the entry on New Ulm to remove three restaurants that are now closed. http://wikitravel.org/en/New_Ulm_%28Minnesota%29#Eat I think the tea room is now closed as well but I only took off the ones I was sure about. I can see a site like this being useful, but there are a lot of flashier, more popular sites, like TripAdvisor that provide similar information and allow user reviews to be shown rather than having individuals edit the posts.

Online Collabor-what? (Thing 9)

Well, this Thing actually looks like it has real-life use potential! As secretary for our library board, I've sent minutes and other documents as attachments, but invariably one or two members couldn't open them. Sometimes it would work if I sent them again individually instead of to the list, but it was frustrating and time-consuming to send them, learn that they hadn't worked, try to re-send them, and so on.

I looked at both Zoho and Google Docs and tried Google Docs for a few reasons.

1. It seemed easier to use, meaning I could look at the screen and figure out how to upload a document, invite people, edit, and so on. Zoho's screen had a lot of stuff on it and it overwhelmed me. I figured that if it wasn't user-friendly for me, it wouldn't be user-friendly for others.
2. I already have mailing lists set up in Google so I didn't have to type in a bunch of e-mail addresses again.

I actually pulled in my entire library board to help with this Thing. I put up a Word document that is a work-in-progress and invited them all to be collaborators on it, and offered this up as a possibility for future sharing of information if it turns out to be easy to use. I'll post back later if I get any feedback.

Go forth and be creative. (Thing 8)

When I first looked at the possibilities in this Thing, several of them seemed to be pretty showy. It reminded me of being in college, with my tiny little 2/40 Mac Classic and its dot-matrix printer that was so COOL because of all the fonts it had available. So, naturally, I felt I had to use as many of those fonts as possible, until I learned a thing or two about presentation design. Taking all of the fun things and actually making them useful and effective can be a trick.

I'm on some Internet bulletin boards and I've seen a lot of slideshows in people's "signatures," and now I know how easy they are to create. I might have to change my boring little text-only siggy to something more exciting. Creating a slideshow on Picture Trail was amazingly easy. My pictures uploaded very quickly, I chose the pictures from my album and a presentation style I wanted, and voila! I had the code in hand. Let's see if it works: (I don't quite trust the auto-code yet.)

The online presentations could be useful in many ways. I was recently part of a church committee where we had to share information and not everyone could open attachments in e-mail, so I ended up copying and pasting text into messages, which was less than ideal. Putting it in an online presentation would have been a good alternative. On the other hand, I wouldn't rely solely on it for a face-to-face presentation because I never trust that there's a good Internet connection where I'm going. If there's a way to create it online and then save a copy to my computer, that would be very useful. Perhaps that functionality is there and I missed it.

Similar to the database tool (and maybe it will be coming up in a future Thing) is the "My Maps" feature of Google maps. I'm in the process of creating maps of children's museum and science museum locations. I can overlay them, and when we're looking for a vacation spot, I can see where they are at a glance to get more bang for our membership buck. Here are the children's museums where we have membership reciprocity. Here's a link in case the preview doesn't load: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102450997014433187097.0004455cd6b4e73c6d166&ll=38.410558,-96.503906&spn=28.26142,82.265625&z=4&om=0

View Larger Map

Something like this will be useful on my Travels with Children blog. (Yes, another shameless plug. You really ought to take a peek, dear reader.) ;-) I can see how a database could also be useful. Once I've done the legwork to compile information, I'd enjoy being able to share it with others.

In the library, it might be possible to have a database where users could enter their book requests, or program ideas, possibly even online sign-up for special events. Having something available in a web-based format rather than requiring each user to have the same program in order to share seems to be very useful.

Talk to Me! (but not face to face.) Thing 7, Web Communication tools

Thoughts about this Thing.

1. A lot of the e-mail productivity tools can be double-edged swords. They're pretty useful once you set them up, but they take time to set up. If I actually take the time to set my spam filters or Outlook rules, or to set up mailing lists, they do save time in the long run.
2. Maybe I'm showing my age, but IM's make me a little nervous. The lag in time always seems odd to me. I'm furiously typing away while someone's on the other end waiting for me to finish. Then I wait while they type their answer, wondering if they're still there (depending on the interface used). I've used "live chat" customer service forums and have found them to be frustrating because the time is not as "live" as I wish it would be. In libraries that use IM services, do they have someone manning the line full-time? Where does it fall in the realm of "what to do first"? E-mails can be answered at a convenient time, but people who want to IM need a reply right now. The article on this topic is interesting and considers some of these same drawbacks.
3. I can see SMS being useful for things like receiving library notices. My local library is still trying to figure out how to send my notices via e-mail, so although I think a lot of these tools have uses in certain circumstances, in a lot of areas we need to take smaller steps and not spend too much time catering to our young population at the expense of our older patrons who may not be familiar or comfortable with these technologies.
4. Web conferencing looks like it would solve a lot of the time and financial difficulties of professional development. Being able to record and watch later, and not having to travel to far-off locales could be really helpful. It could be especially useful for libraries in greater Minnesota, which are farther apart, and which generally have very small staffs making it difficult to take time away from the library for workshops.

I joined the 23things Google group. This looks very familiar to a Yahoo group I'm a member of. There are 10 of us in that group, and we send 50-100 messages between us daily. We have databases set up--addresses, birthdays, etc., and sections for file-sharing and photos. The Google Librarian group looks utterly useless. There are hardly any messages there and most of them are spam. A group is only as good as its users make it, so merely setting up a group doesn't make it successful. It takes some intensive work on the part of a few to get its momentum going. While the 23things group is interesting as far as seeing what's available, there are so many different things to join in these Things that we're being spread pretty thin as to where to put any comments we might have.