1) John Blossom (2009). What makes social media tick: seven secrets of social media. Content Nation, chapter 2. Wiley Publishing Inc. http://www.contentnation.com/wiki/chapter-2-what-makes-social-media-tick-seven-secrets-of-social-media
This article takes an in depth look at various functions of social media such as the role of Weblogs in both library and personal settings. I like how the author points out a key feature of Weblogs being the archival tools in which many blogs have. This class has actually afforded me my first opportunity to work within a blog setting, and I am finding the archiving feature to be of great value. It has even been useful to me outside of this class. For instance, if I am in another class and they make mention of a topic that has been discussed in this specific class, all I have to do is enter into my blog and search my archive. Once I find the articles dealing with this subject, I then am brought to the particular entry where my notes and the exact articles I read dealing with this subject are stored, which is much more efficient than having to haphazardly skim a bunch of papers. This article also mentions, and I had not thought of this possibility until now, the benefits that blogging can have in a group project setting. I don't know how many times I have, during group projects; I have run into the problem of e-mail organization. Blogging seems like a much more efficient alternative. I also like the idea presented in this article regarding establishing a "reference blog" for those that may be working reference in a library. It may be a very viable alternative to the old reference binder. In addition, I think this article did a good job in relaying the opinion that librarians need to acquainted with the technicalities of blog creation in order to assist patrons who may benefit from the establishment of one.
Charles Allan, “Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program: Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons, C&RL News, April 2007 Vol. 68, No. 4 http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2007/april07/usingawiki.cfm
This article also points out the increased benefits for librarians in using social software applications. In this particular article the benefits of creating a Wiki are discussed in order to affect more efficient communication processes in the realm of library instruction. It was interesting to learn that many companies actually offer Wikis (I had thought that this specific social software was only available via Wikipedia). Basically, a wiki works by establishing a list of users (via their e-mail address) who have rights to contribute to the material within said Wiki. Unfortunately, I have had no experience with using Wikis in the past, but this article definitely provides great incentive to get familiar with them in the future especially within a library setting.
2) Xan Arch, “Creating the academic library folksonomy: Put social tagging to work at your institution” C&RL News, February 2007 Vol. 68, No. 2 http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2007/february07/libraryfolksonomy.cfm
This article provides an overview of the benefits of social tagging or “folksonomy”. Then the article further outlines how social bookmarking sites such as Delicious.com can make the life for World Wide Web frequent users so much easier. I also learned about Delicious.com from this class which very much helped me organize the sites I find interesting or worth bookmarking. This article explains another benefit of social tagging being, through the creation of additional subject access by users to library materials. The article explains that this system can be largely fruitful for those users who are unfamiliar with controlled vocabularies and so these user supplied folksonomies will allow other users to retrieve information available in their fields easily. Also the use of social tagging in a library setting can be a way for librarians to point out good information resources that are available on the web. The article then states, that this would assist library patrons with the task of searching and bookmarking websites from the World Wide Web.
3) Jimmy Wales: “How a ragtag band created Wikipedia” http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html
I had previously understood how certain aspects of Wikipedia worked, but this video further explained to me how decisions are made about what entries should be included. I learned that this is done via the vote’s page which was actually new to me, and how votes and discussions among volunteer editors makes the process about which entry can be determined to be significant enough to make its way into Wikipedia. I also learned at the end of this video about how Wales discussed the creation of socially generated textbooks, and this idea sounds interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment