Open World Cat - check it out!

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Wiki Posting Frenzy

Wow - don't you think that PBwiki is totally The Bomb?! I am hoping to use it to begin a wiki for my section here at BCL. Hey, maybe a total COMPIS wiki would be even better??? That way, everyone in Periodicals, Interlibrary Loan, and the Computer Center could put in their collective two cents; believe me, between us we've got a LOT to say! Anyhow, I added this blog to the NSUlibs Wiki and also to the BCLtlc wiki page, where I put in the obligatory Kilroyesque shout-out. But the best part was adding a couple of entries to the NSU Wiki FAVORITES! I started by putting in a link to ShareILL, an interlibrary loan wiki to which I contribute. The ILL Custom Holdings there are a perfect fit for wikization, because they a constantly evolving. Then I had to decide between linking or embedding my Favorite Brian Setzer Xmas videos under Favorite Music - I decided to try one of each in the wiki. Since the holidays are upon us, check out the very hippest & most compact version of The Nutcracker you'll ever hear. I guarantee that you're going to love it, ho ho ho!

WackyWikis

These are my two Wiki gods; they assist me in both finding and editing interesting wikis! I took a good long look at Charlotte-Mecklenberg's wiki, along with the swell Library Success: Best Practices wiki. I also think the 2006 ALA wiki is mega-convenient for those that attended AND those that did not get to go. As far as I am concerned, one of the best things a library can do with a wiki is use it to replace their tired old staff intranets, ZZzzzzzzsnoreZzzzzz. Wouldn't it be great to check out a brand new BCL WIKI on a daily basis?!!! I suspect that lots more staffers would contribute than the few who are 'editors' in our current info incarnation. I really like the oh-so-democratic concept of a wiki: everyone can put in their own two cents! (please see Amy's 2 cents below.) Also, I am hoping to begin an Interlibrary Loan wiki here amongst our wee staff so that we can all contribute to a Standard Operating Procedures manual. Obsolescense overtook me everytime I began an SOP Manual in the past using conventional word processing; the procedures for both lending and borrowing always changed before the ink was even dry!

selfish Library 2.0 thoughts

I shall keep my thoughts on this vast topic limited to a few brief comments on the relationship of 2.0 to Interlibrary Loan, aka Resource Sharing. At the recent Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference, the keynote speaker was Dr. Joseph Janes of the University of Washington. He kicked off the conference (themed ILL 2.0: tools to meet the demands) with a thought-provoking and amusing presentation that had us rolling in the aisles. Please take a look at his PowerPoint; too bad I don't have a video of his accompanying performance because he hopped, skipped, & jumped all over the stage, all to drive home his point: if we do not evolve, we are going to get left in the dust.
As part of the Discovery exercises, I read Chip Nigles' essay entitled "To more powerful ways to cooperate." He stresses the importance of the Open WorldCat website on several levels. First of all, it does something the WorldCat database cannot do: once a user has established an account, he/she can build (via marking) an entire bibliography, refered to as a "list" on the site, and subsequently share it. What a great tool for students doing a research paper together! In the database, users can only convert one bib record at a time into a citation, then paste them into a Word document to build their bibliography.
In both formats, however, user participation is encouraged (wiki style) using their Review This Item feature. I am proud to say that when this new feature was added to the database, long before the emergence of Open WorldCat , I was among the first to add a very brief plot summary (OCLC #365453) under Add/View Comments! (It is called Public Notes on the website.) There I was, using Web 2.0, without even knowing it!!! Also, Open WorldCat has the easiest social sharing link of all time - simply click on Share It and you can send to Facebook, Del.icio.us, etc.
The next step for ILL at BCL is for our customers to request interlibrary loans from the Open WorldCat site, instead of from the WorldCat database. This is already being done in the Northwest via the experimental WorldCat Local program. Since customers vastly prefer the site to the database, this is coming soon to a library near you! Unless, of course, BCL wants to get left in the dust...
P.S. I would like to hear what my MARC-oriented colleagues think of LibraryThing, in terms of Web 2.0. Can y'all really be that loose?!!

Library Blogs

When I attended the 2.0-themed Northwestern Resource Sharing Conference in September, presenter Rachel Bridgewater mentioned feeding in Del.icio.us tags (from folks interested in the very same topics as you are) to one's own newsreader as a great way to get other people to do your research for you. I did not totally understand it at the time, but now I shall even receive her stuff via the Bloglines feed! Ha! I find the idea of glomming onto other researchers' results extremely appealing; nothing like having someone else, with perhaps a wee bit more time on their hands, do the digging for you...