Wikilicious

Hi Everyone,

After a brief hiatus I'm back in the world of 23 Things. I'm sure you were all bemoaning my absence ;)

Like most other people,I use Wikipedia quite a lot. As Aqua says, Wikipedia is a great starting point for research if you know nothing about a topic and want a succinct introduction to it. This is what I tell students in information literacy classes (I think they instantly become sceptical of you if you run Wikipedia into the ground at the first opportunity!) Obviously Wikipedia articles haven't been subjected to a scholarly review process, which limits your ability to cite them for academic purposes, but this doesn't mean they're not useful. Moreover, as the 'About Wikipedia' page says, some of the more 'established' articles which have been around for a while are quite balanced and are reasonably well referenced, which enhances their reliability.

I can't say I've really used wikis all that much, however. I would imagine they'd be very useful when collaborating with peers on a project, or when trying to create an organisational reference tool (I could envisage, for instance, a library creating a wiki about circulation procedures -- where rules are perpetually being revised).

I made my first contribution to a wiki today! I went to Wikipedia and found the page on Newtown. I edited a photo caption and added some information on the public transport there. I didn't find that I needed to become a member...?

Aqua noted the difficulty in getting students to contribute to wikis. I think many students are time poor, which may account for their reluctance to participate. This is why I think wikis are great for actual project work where people have an incentive to participate...

Goota go,
Kate

Tagging and all that jazz

Hi All,

I just signed up to Delicious (thank God it isn't 'Del.icio.us' anymore -- that was so annoying!). The process of getting started was very easy. I ended up importing the bookmarks I already had on my PC.

I like it how you can choose to share or withhold bookmarks; this way you can use the same account for personal and professional purposes. The tagging process seemed quite easy -- just click 'Edit' to add, delete or change a tag. I used underscores as replacements for spaces. i.e. instead of typing 'Web 2.0' I typed 'Web_2.0'. I did this because I was worried that 'Web 2.0' would be read as 'Web' and '2.0'... I haven't actually tested that theory, however. I can definitely see the benefits in being able to view bookmarks that have been assigned the same tags by other people. It is time efficient to search for sites this way.

After assigning tags I felt as though I had been too general. For instance, I had tagged heaps of bookmarks as 'Personal'. It occurred to me, however, that it would probably have been better to create a 'Personal' tag bundle, and then give bookmarks within this more specific tags... It goes to show the importance of thinking carefully about a filing system before implementing it!

I think the library could use this technology in a number of ways. You could use Delicious to tag useful websites for students (this is what Kathy has done at the Med Library -- soon to be seen in the new LibGuides). You could also use it among staff as a reference/professional development tool. i.e. tag conference websites, catalogues, professional associations etc...

I think this type of technology encourages interaction and a stronger sense of community. I could imagine this would be useful to most students, but especially those isolated geographically (e.g. distance students).

I also checked out Technorati. I guess Google is like searching the full text of a document while Technorati is like searching Subject Headings -- in theory more specific results. The only problem is when people don't use tags uniformly. For instance, I found posts tagged 'Web2' and 'Web2.0'. I don't use tags in my blog posts but will from now on!

Cheers,
Kate

Image Generators are the bomb!

Hi everyone,

I think I am officially obsessed with this topic. I just spent half an hour devising weird images and had to remind myself to stop!

I had a go at 'Warholising' myself, then found out what my gangster name would be if I spontaneously decided to join the Sopranos, then decided to deliver my own library sermon via the Church sign from the Simpsons... Endless hours of fun!