Week 7

Hello again. Week 7 - del.icio.us, tagging, folksonomies, LibraryThing, and Technorati - a big week! I did the del.icio.us exercise, and happily found it quite straightforward. Set up an account (http://delicious.com/missemerald) and posted 2 bookmarks to it - one to this blog, and another to 'Faith and Theology' (a blog I read regularly). Initially, I didn't understand that to use 2 words or more for one tag you need to combine them without a space (eg nswstatelibrary), but once I got this right I was happy with my tags.

I then explored Technorati and LibraryThing. I was impressed by the advanced search capability on Technorati (keyword, URL, tag), and am now tempted to use LibraryThing to organise my somewhat chaotic home library!

To me, the striking thing about all these tools is their profoundly social nature. Yes, they have other benefits (eg accessing your bookmarks from any computer via del.icio.us), but it seems to me that the overriding advantage they offer is various forms of sharing and collaboration with others (eg is easy to see how libraries can use del.icio.us to assist users in accessing quality sites, and also how different libraries can share their discoveries with each other).

Week 3 (library cat!)

library cat, originally uploaded by Lumi*.

I couldn't resist including this image of a 'library cat', having just read Dewey: a small-town library cat who touched the world by Vicki Myron. I adore cats!

This third week of the Learning 2.0 course has been a revelation - I hadn't previously ventured into the world of photo sharing. I can envisage library uses such as sharing images of library layouts, display and promotional ideas/events, competitions, and of course local history image collections....among others!

I did experience problems when attempting to use the Blogger photo upload tool - whatever I did, I ended up with a blank page (no photo!). After a couple of frustrating attempts, I proceeded using Flickr's blogging tool (and I'm hoping it's going to work!).

I was interested to note the group tagging guidelines set forward by the Libraries and Librarians Flickr group, which included mandatory, conditional, and optional tags. I imagine that with our backgrounds in cataloguing and indexing, most library staff would be quite attentive to (and proficient in) tagging!

I was also interested to note the advent and development of Creative Commons - the concept of less restrictive copyright seems more in tune with the new ways of working, networking, and interacting that have been engendered by the online environment.