wonderful wikis

This week has demystified wikis a bit, but I'm yet to go on the adventure. Checked out the Mint Museums website, but their wiki was hard to find from the front page. I really enjoyed the book lovers wiki and can see real potential there for a whole range of interactions, from exhibition viewers to people in client groups who want to share info about things they found useful in our collections. Biz Wiki was an extension to all this, and showed how a subject based wiki could work. When I have a password I'll add my bit to the SL wiki, then have a bit of a rest!

buttons

I added a notifier button to my desktop today to save going to see if I have any new blogs to read. Just not sure how this will be viewed in a SOE environment. It's rather like knowing the postman's been because the letter came though your door - in a very smart English way - rather than walking to the letter box. I need practice just to find which account, name and password I can find all those blogs I marked, so that's my self appointed task before I move to the optional exercise. I can see that used effectively, a blog could notify users when a new title comes in, especially if we provided a list of subject areas, topics or (shock horror) even dewey ranges to choose from.

rss and all that

Feeding isn't always easy and rss, blogs, names and passwords all got a bit confusing today. However, with a bit of perseverance I finally started to get it and can now start to understand. This week will take longer to learn than before, however I was really interested in a grizzly bear blog I found as well as one from BBC Scotland, so it will be fun to watch/read/hear/see them.

It was interesting to see that for many bloggers the library is about architecture and place. I suppose the ability to photo inside is extremely limited, given privacy restrictions and our no photographs in galleries policy. Good to see that we promote our events in this way. Perhaps we could consider some exhibition images put up through flickr - even if it was the exhibition signature image.

I checked out 'waves' for fun. Have a look at http://www.flickr.com/photos/acastellano/181730235/. Its pretty amazing, with comments somehow embedded in all those drawn spaces which overlay the image. The NLA our town is interesting. Wonder what staff resources it requires. See that National Treasures exhibition is up there. Imagine the benefit in posting the heritage collection guide, or some Dupain images – not sure about the copyright implications. Maybe I've got a flickr account now with one image - will go and check. This session had lots to take in and it took me ages to get back to the publish post button. Still a novice!

beginnings

Today I've done part of lesson 2 and know that writing things down is a useful thing with so much else going on. In the old fashioned way, I've created a paper based folder for things I need to remember. I looked at the other blogs and really liked the Library of Congress blog. I also liked the Australian War memorial exhibition blog. I know many visitors have things to say about our collections when they're on show, and can see how the Library could build up a useful body of knowledge - particularly on photos from the collection where we have scant information about people in the images, or dates and places where we've made an educated guess which could then be confirmed. From Lesson 1 I must say I found the video off-putting, even though the idea behind it is great. The bi-lines were clever, but the jumpy screen images could prove to be annoying and distressing. Maybe its an age thing, but I found the music intensely irritating.