It's a wrap

The end already? Feels like I was just getting started...

If asked, I wouldn't have said I was particularly leading a Web2.0 life, but one effect of 23 Things has been to make me realise that maybe it has crept up and installed itself in my head without my even noticing. So, a lot of items on the menu were familiar to me, although in some cases I'm sure I could be using the tools more efficiently (Twitter, I mean you).

Of the unfamiliar stuff, I can see the theoretical merit in some applications, but they fell at the first hurdle by being difficult to load / inefficient to operate, or by not being significantly better than other tools I was already using (Diigo, Zotero).

The real potential for me lies in Flickr (for grabbing images rather than posting my holiday snaps), and Google Docs if I'm co-authoring something. I'm ambivalent about Doodle - it works well, but I keep having to cross-reference my Outlook calendar to complete a poll. Maybe I'm not doing it right.

Does Web2.0 have a future in Libraries? As I hinted at the top, it's already happening, and we ignore it at our peril. I don't believe it's going to suddenly solve our communication / liaison problems at a stroke, but it's another channel that somebody might be tuned into.

Will I keep up this blog? Not sure I have much worth saying. I also worry that I'm spouting either into a void (Hello - Is anybody out there??) or I'm talking to like-minded people (The Echo-chamber effect - add your own sound effects at this point).

Looking forward to the Wrap Party...

  by  moriza 

Wolverhampton accents and Dave Gorman perfume

Noddy Holder once told the story of how in America they all thought his band was called Slide (sorry Helen). I did briefly get excited by the thought that we'd be sharing Youtube clips of Cum on Feel the Noize. Which incidentally has now been turned into a folk ballad



A great resource, and poking around I came up with this "pitch" by an ad company, courtesy of Philip Slade. In shops soon...

Dave Gorman perfume

View more presentations from Philip Slade

Trusting your colleagues

I'd never used Google Docs, not being a great creator of shared output. I really should get out more.

Went to a book launch last year by a Warwick academic: the tome was co-written by a lecturer in New Zealand, so the Warwick author described writing his part, and then waking up next morning to find out that part of his text had been re-written and added to. Wonder if they used Google Docs?

To use the cliche, if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing Coronation Street scripts with John Fletcher (no, not that John Fletcher) using Google Docs.

Wikiseedier

Well, here I am as usual, thinging late on a Friday. I figured I would go with option B and have a fiddle with a wiki, so why not be ambitious and go with the big daddy, Wikipedia. As I try to warn students in info literacy sessions, the theory of crowdsourcing is great, but everybody should engage their brain and question the authority of what they are reading. As Jimmy Wales (one of the founders) said in a recent Guardian interview:

"You shouldn't really use Wikipedia as the sole source for anything, ever. You shouldn't use anything as the sole source for anything, in my view." 

 There are legendary tales of academics deliberately planting plausible disinformation in wikipedia articles to see how much comes back from students. And there are of course the irritations caused by jokers. Here, for example, is what the Wikipedia entry for Wikipedia said for a while on October 9th, 2010:

NEVER USE WIKIPEDIA BECAUSE RETARDS LEIK MEEEE CAN EEEEEDIT IT LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL'''Wikipedia''' is a Free content free,Some versions, such as the English language version, contain non-free content. World Wide Web web-based, collaborative writing collaborative, multilingualism multilingual encyclopedia project.....


Anyway, being a good citizen, I just edited the entry for Warwick Arts Centre to add a couple of touches.