Olibravarian’s Weblog

This was a fun one! First I looked at Yelp, because I had not heard of it and am a big fan of checking reviews before I spend money on a place (although obviously you can’t always trust the reviews). It didn’t have a huge number of reviews, but was easy to use, and I did discover a bubble tea place close to my house that I wasn’t aware of. I also saw a review by one of my co-workers!

I also looked at HotPads.com. Some really nice features there – I liked the cartoony visuals and the map zoom. There were a couple of things I couldn’t figure out easily, like how to close the “more information” window about a property (although maybe that was just me as it seemed obvious once I found the “minimize” arrow). Also, there didn’t seem to be a way to scroll up and down on the map. I learned that there are some very expensive rentals out there! And that lots of people are trying to sell their homes!

I think for my test document, I’ll go ahead and write my Week 9/Thing 18 blog post here. Then I can try publishing it directly from Zoho. So far I like it! It doesn’t look all that slick, but the functionality seems to be there! I especially like the ability to comment in-text. I think I’ll try this next time I need to use an online word processor. In the past I have used Google Docs, which I like in general, but it doesn’t allow for “callout” style comments as far as I know. Also, I find the formatting to be a little funky when importing/exporting to Word, so I’ll be interested to see how Zoho compares.

OK, now to test the publish feature!

It worked! Didn’t export the tags the way I thought it would, but that’s my only complaint. Oh, and I see it’s “scheduled” to be published 4 hours from now. I wonder why that is?

I’m pleased with our MSD and FAQ wikis, but what would REALLY make them successful is if people add to them! That’s the thing about wikis – they are most useful when the community really contributes and updates them frequently, which is kinda the whole point. So I will personally do my best to keep this in mind and to add new entries as I see fit. I also need to create shortcuts to the MSD wiki on my personal computer and the reference desk computer. I have issues with bookmarks. There are so many that I never remember what’s there or how to find it, tags notwithstanding.

Along with Google Docs, I have found wikis to be helpful for short-term collaborations (ad-hoc committees, etc.), but no group leaps out at me as a good candidate for a dedicated internal wiki. Again, I don’t think a wiki would hurt, but it seems to me that there really has to be a need for it first, or it won’t be used. Hmm, maybe for an internal library instruction group…I’ll have to let that little idea germinate to see if it goes anywhere.

This week we looked at several examples of library wiki use. I can certainly see how they would be beneficial for public libraries, both in building communities for their users and for collaboration among staff, particularly when those staff are spread among multiple branches in a large library system. That said, as an academic librarian, I am of course most interested in the examples of wiki use that are most relevant for academic libraries. Among those, there seem to be three categories: wikis for staff, wikis for professional organizations/associations, and wikis for outreach/instruction.

In terms of professional/organizational wikis, I thought the Library Success wiki was very nice as a shared resource for professional development. I wasn’t even aware of all the ALA wikis! I’m guessing I have heard announcements about them multiple times, but I seem to have ignored them. I have added one to my RSS feeds (Tech Casting of course!) to see how often it’s updated.

I see that some libraries are doing nice things with wikis as subject guides. One thing I didn’t see many examples of were libraries using wikis for user FAQs like we are doing here with Boatipedia! Anyone aware of similar pages at other academic libraries? Maybe I should add it to the LibSuccess wiki page.

I’m a little out of order here. I had to wait until I was home to add some books to my LibraryThing library – much easier when you can just look at the shelf. I really loved the LibraryThing interface. It was super simple and intuitive, really good design in my opinion. My only complaint is that a couple of things did not display properly in Safari. For instance, I tried to review a book, and the pop-up window appeared halfway out of my screen with no apparent way to move it down to where I could access it. I have to admit that, while I’ve searched it before and have certainly heard LOTS about it, this was my first time actually adding books to LibraryThing. Somehow I didn’t realize or had forgotten that you can just look things up in Amazon or the Library of Congress, which is much easier than typing in all these manual entries! The keyword search worked well, and only let me down on one book. It was fun to go through a shelf and rediscover some of my collection, but jeez – it would be a whole lotta work to add all of my books. I do love that you can sort by author, title, LC classification, pretty much anything you want! And the cover displays are nice as well. Overall, I am really impressed.

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