Unit 12: Reading notes

Reichardt, R., & Harder, G. (2005). Weblogs: their use and application in science and technology libraries. Science & Technology Libraries, 25(3), 105-116.

• Written by an engineering librarian and a biological/computing sciencs librarian- interesting perspectives
• Good background on the history of blogs
• Applications in science and technology libraries: managing teams and projects, reference desk blogging, student blogging, current awareness
• "The challenge for librarians is to become familiar with the weblog and its potential, and explore new ways to further its development and application in science and technology librarianship." Good point - I wonder how much this has changed since this article was written in 2004.

Charles Allan, "Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program: Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons." C&RL News, April 2007 Vol. 68, No. 4.

• Wiki - multi-author, collaborative software
• "A library instruction wiki can create better information sharing, facilitate collaboration in the creation of resources, and efficiently divide work loads among librarians."
• Library instruction wikis can be used to share knowledge between librarians as well as allow them to work collaboratively to create training materials.

Xan Arch, "Creating the academic library folksonomy: Put social tagging to work at your institution." C&RL News, February 2007 Vol. 68, No. 2.

• Social tagging - allows users to create bookmarks (or “tags”) for Web sites and save them online. Tags are usually subject keywords. These tags become a folksonomy. Del.icio.us is a popular site.
• "The library is meant for discovery of information, through the catalog, through the reference librarian, through browsing a shelf. This discovery often stalls at the Internet because it is frustratingly uncatalogable. But still many students turn to the Internet as a resource, without guidance and without a critical eye. What if the library could provide an index to quality Internet resources, created by the librarians at the institution?"
• PennTags (tags.library.upenn.edu) - University of Pennsylvania site that allows students and faculty to create folksonomies

Jimmy Wales: "How a ragtag band created Wikipedia"

• 2005 numbers: over 600,000 articles in English, 2 million articles across all languages.
  
• I looked up current numbers on Wikipedia - as of today, there are 2.6 million articles in English, and more than 10 million articles in more than 250 languages.
  
• Neutral point of view policy - social cooperation
• "The majority view is not necessarily neutral"