Answer Board

I reckon we have to tread the Answer Board - I am going to make it my mission the next time one comes up. We have a natural advantage here being earlier int he world clock, so we should get lots of us to do it.

The main problem is going to be the homework questions - which a lot of them are. At work I can show them resources and tools and help them answer the question. But on YAnswers that is not the idea.

Library Thing

Another toy. I think I will continue to use GoodReads more (it is free and unlimited and it means you exchange book info with the people you know, which suits me more than with strangers). However, Library Things's input tool is sooooo much better than it used to be. You can choose from 690 different catalogues to search for data on - so it gets the out of print and small publications if you search their local research libraries. The state libraries of Australia are all there so that was good fun!


This is the link to my catalogue - http://www.librarything.com/catalog/harbison
but I cannot really see the use for a catalogue that only holds 200 books. Gurulib looks much more useful to me - a tool rather than a toy.

delicious and tagging

I think somewhere I missed the idea of tagging. I can do it and I find it useful to put tags on things for work, but I cannot see how a random cloud of words is more useful than a hierarchical tree of folders. True the latter imposes a false sense of order, but given the fact that I have about 1000 bookmarks I actually find it easier to use them than to use tags.

And Google toolbar (and iGoogle) let me do that from wherever I am. It is not confined any more than delicious is - in fact less as it is a nice easy drop down menu.

And it is private - and I like that - I do not see why the rest of the world should need to know my fascination with psychiatry! But here is the link to my delicious page anyway http://delicious.com/kateharbison

Luisa's Library Orientation Video

So here is my favourite library related video (apart from the abseiling one) - and not only because Luisa and Xanthe did it!

Online video

Almost as much fun as playing backgammon online, but a damn fine way to waste the evening.

I have posted a video of Sam on holidays already, so here is a wonderful ad!

Wikipedia project

Wikipedia, however, is a scarey thing. While I use it myself for anything that does not matter, I have seen too many unreliable and skewed pages to use it for anything important. Just look at most author pages and they are constructed by themselves, or worse, their publisher.

A few months ago I started studiously going through the Brisbane suburbs and making sure they link to Brisbites as well as OurBrisbane (which does just harvest Brisbites information, but doe snot giver references or links). This was very arduous and I think I only got up to Corinda. Something else to continue. Just went and had a look and some of the links are wrong anyway - so got to start again!

Wikis

I like Wikis a lot! I think they are actually the most useful of the web 2.0 tools I play with. At work we use wikis to communicate all the time. If something is happening we put it on the news page - and people can amend it as it gets fixed. We put up information about training and meetings and conferences so everybody can see it. We keep the info desk rosters and the IL planning schedules there so everyone can add, contribute, amend. We even put up recipes and jokes.

We set the alerts to go so when something is added or amended we get an email about it. It is just like sending an email to the group then - but a permanet record is kept too and we can refer to it when we need it.

At QUT we are looking at putting our subject guides in wiki format - it allows contribution by the students as well as the staff and can change to suit each cohort.

The one major disadvantage is that the less techie people in a group can find themselves being left out of the communication process. When we started to use the one at CA, I went round and made sure everybody had set the alerts up properly. That way they would not miss out on information because they do not use the wiki. I also set the home page on the info desk to be the wiki so we saw it whenever we were there.

With wikis for other groups this has been mor eof a problem. At Grace's Hut we have a wiki (http://graceshut.wetpaint.com/) and it was meant to work so that when we weeded or had anything to report we would put it into there. But most people just email me and get tme to put it in, and never use any of the functionality. Philistines!