Tame The Web

Via Gerry McKiernan:

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3064/

Josh Fischman writes:

Long a standard reference source for scholarship, largely because of its tightly controlled editing, theEncyclopaedia Britannica announced this week it was throwing open its elegantly-bound covers to the masses. It will allow the “user community” (in the words of the encyclopedia’s blog) to contribute their own articles, which will be clearly marked and run alongside the edited reference pieces.

This seems to be a response to the runaway success of the user-edited online reference tool Wikipedia. (See for yourself. Do a Web search on a topic and note whether Wikipedia or Britannica shows up first.) Scholars have been adamantly opposed to Wikipedia citations in academic papers because the authors and sources are always changing. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder, agrees with this, but in next week’s issue of The Chronicle (click back to our home page on Monday for more) he also points to some changes in the reference tool that may make it more palatable to scholars.

At Britannica, “readers and users will also be invited into an online community where they can work and publish at Britannica’s site under their own names,” the encyclopedia’s blog explains.

Stephen Francouer writes:

http://tinyurl.com/556pof

My Plan
Do quick look ups of nineteen terms and concepts discussed in Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody to see what reference sources would be more helpful to the students I work with.

Methodology
Using quotation marks around search terms to force phrase searches, I looked in the following resources:

• Wikipedia
• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• Oxford Reference

In any given set of search results, I would look first for main entries that mirrored my search terms exactly and record any such precise hits in a table. If there were no exact hits, then I looked for any entries in which most of my search terms were in the main entry (such as an entry on “social network services” when I searched for “social networks”). If none of my search words were in the main entry, then I looked for entries in which the search words appeared in the body of the entry and were adequately defined and explained (as opposed to simply cited or referenced in an offhand way).

<snip>

Results
As you can see from the updated table of results, Wikipedia and Gale Virtual Reference Library both do pretty well and Encyclopedia Britannica fared the worst.

Take a look at the results and the rest of Stephen’s post. For emerging thinking, a discussion of newer terms or a clearinghouse of links for that new read, Wikipedia may be a useful resource. For example, reading the entry for “radical transparency” might be a good first step for exploring the concept.

Check out Steve Campion’s newest installment - yet another perfect resource for your Learning 2.0 endeavors!

http://librarystream.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/learn-more-wikis/

If you gather a committee, write a draft document, and solicit feedback, you might receive scores of revisions in email and on paper. Compiling all those changes back into a single coherent document could be a long and tedious task. On the other hand, you could create a wiki. That would enable everyone to work on the same collaborative document and compile changes on the fly. A wiki is basically a read/write website open to anyone with permissions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7130325.stm

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse younger students access to the site are “bad educators”.

As long as an article included accurate citations, he said he had “no problem” with it being used as a reference for younger students, although academics would “probably be better off doing their own research”.

I advocate for this with my students: use Wikipedia as that “stepping stone” but also as a way to tap into the collective knowledge on a topic - especially pop culture, technology and basic historical entries. I also urge librarians to take an active role in editing pages devoted to their towns, colleges or corporations, etc. Someday it may be in a librarian’s job description to be the “Wikipedia Liaison” for his or her library.

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/212/source/rss/report_display.asp

Pew reports that 36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia. A table included in the report details to top sites used for reference and education. Wikipedia has 24% use in a table provided by Hitwise of those types of sites.

The National Library of Medicine is featured, but all of the others are not library sites. That’s a given if you add in OCLC’s finding that 1% of folks start with the library Web site when they need information.

Implications:

Librarians should be answering questions through sites noted in the table, such as Yahoo! Answers, etc.

Librarians might was to be working in wikipedia as well, crafting articles and building in library presence.

What else?

Teresa Walls, the chair of Children and Technology Committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) wrote to announce the committee’s new wiki at:

http://wikis.ala.org/alsc/index.php/ALSC_ChildTech_Wiki

I’m impressed with this fledgling wiki. The Currently Reading page looks interesting. I hope more librarians add to that page and the others. Let’s watch this resource grow!

Dion Hinchcliffe posts an overview of the best of Web 2.0 for 2006:

http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2006.htm

Amongst the choices are some of my favorites as well: Netbvibes and YouTube.

File this under “Using Wiki Software for Training & Reference.”

http://askacpl.pbwiki.com/\

My favorite part, on the front page:

The SUNYLA New Tech Wiki: http://sunylanewtechwiki.pbwiki.com/

ASU’s University Technology Office Strategic Technology Plan 2005-2006: http://www.sannier.net/wiki1/index.php?title=Main_Page#TECHPLAN_WIKI_CONTENTS

Don’t miss this one if you are interested in learning all about the wild world of wikis (forgive the alliteration…it’s early) presented by Meredith Farkas.

http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2006/07/07/wiki-webcast-youre-invited/

Oh those Princeton Librarians!

http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2006/06/giving-our-summer-reading-club-20.html

Check out the Summer Reading Club’s wiki!

Lots of interesting Web 2.0 bits in my aggregator this morning, as I prepare to sign on the dotted line for a condominium in Oak Park, Illinois! (I may faint when I sign…)

Anyway:

Greg Schwartz reports on a library branded podcatcher! This is important on many levels: the library sees the need to use a Web 2.0 tool but also gets the importance of branding the service. Go Lansing PL! I think Illinois Libraries ROCK! http://openstacks.net/os/archives/000929.html

Have you branded your L2/Web 2.0 services for your library? Is the wiki/blog/IM presence linked to the linbrary and its online look and feel? (And don’t forget to brand your places and spaces as well!)

Rachel Gordon reports that the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri-Columbia is producing webcasts! (I originally wrote podcasts! — see Greg Schwartz comment! oops!)This is huge and other LIS schools may want to ewatch this project closely. Again, many levels of importance: the LIS school that podcasts/webcasts will certainly be preparing students for jobs like this and it certainly is a great promotion tool for lecture series, notable news and more as well as a recruitment tool! http://librarycareers.blogspot.com/2006/03/university-of-missouri-colubmia-lis.html

In a similar example, Emily from my LIS753 reports on the GSLIS Wiki run by library students at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign! http://eroses.blogspot.com/2006/03/gslis-wikisee-what-competition-is.html

AND

Hathaway, also in my LIS753 at Dominican, reports on wikis and the use of a wiki for a librarian/patron created short story at Coralville Public Library. http://libschoolconfidential.blogspot.com/2006/03/hawaiian-words-in-english.html

Thanks Meredith! Thanks ALA!

http://meredith.wolfwater.com/ala2006/

One of our cool Circulation Associates stopped by my desk after a planning meeting for the Circulation Policy manual.

“How goes it,” I said.

“Good, “He said. “I just learned how to do a wiki. It’s cool.”

So, our circ staff will be building their manual via our wiki software. They started learning in the official SJCPL sandbox.

I have one word, and it’s three letters and it’s HOT!

Meredith is talking wikis!

This is a perfect opportunity for librarians who want to learn more about wikis and the power of collaborative software from the blogger/soon-to-be author Meredith Farkas, who started it all with the ALA Chicago wiki back in th day (can I say “back in the day” about this past spring?) when all of this seemed oh so new.

I can’t wait!

Update: Checkout this article at SLJ that includes some hints and tips from Meredith!

http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

Our Reference Librarians and Web Developer are hard at work on this new project! And let me be the first to say they are making great strides to move SJCPL toward Library 2.0! What you’ll find is librarian created subject pages in the grand tradition of Kansas City PL via a Mediawiki installation. All of the staff have been trained and are creating pages in their areas of interest and expertise. It gets me going!

Our library users will be able to get logins and post under the TALK tabs. Let the conversations begin!

Give it look sometime and let me know what you think. Content will be added off and on so keep looking back if you’d like to see how this new tool for reaching out to our patrons goes!

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue42/web-focus/

Here’s a nice article by Brian Kelly, who I will be presenting with (along with Aaron) at Internet Librarian International in London in October. Take a look. Here’s Brian’s line up at ILI2005 as well.

I’m fascinated by the use of wikis to document/report/collaborate on projects. Last June at UNT, we started a wiki for our two cohorts writing group papers and the amount of work that was done within the pages was incredible. At SJCPL, we are beginning to experiment with staff authored wiki pages as part of our presence.

Take away: you might want to put wikis up a little higher on your roster of new collaboration tools to experiment with if you haven’t already. Think collaborative web spaces for staff projects, policy manuals, proposals, administrative notes, and more. It might be a titch overwhelming at first, but it’s really easy once you get it.

Take away (2): are you on the team planning a library meeting for your state, local or division group. Throw a wiki into the discussion for use at the meeting. Let’s get our feet wet!

I heart the Social Software blog…

http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000810051433/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bend%2C_Indiana

Our Library is NOT on the South Bend, Indiana wikipedia entry. It should be (and will)… how about you, gentle reader? This could be an important access point for users to find your web presence. Let’s make sure that we are present everywhere we can be!

I am tickled to report Meredith Farkas has mounted a Library Best Practices wiki!

http://www.libsuccess.org

Quick! Zip over there and check out the incredible resources being gathered by US - librarians oparticiupating in this big beautiful community of practice found here in cyberspace.

I have to spend more time, but I have already found sections devoted to training, blogs and more. Woohoo. Meredith, as I said at the Blogger’s Roundtable, this idea is HOT X 3.

Folks, let’s go forth and build this thing….