A Wikitorian Look at Wikis

I am enamored with the potential of wikis. And I love the name.

Many, many, many years ago when I was a Vicky, not a Victoria, I had trouble with both the concept of nicknames and my pronunciation of the letter V. Consequently, when asked my name, I proudly said: Wikitoria. One of my lovely grandmothers called me that for the next twenty years. With this is my background, how can I not love wikis?

Professionally, I am slowly working on developing one with a coworker for ourselves and other reference staff. The subject of this wiki? Legal resources at the Charleston County Public Library. Many of us panic when a patron asks for direction on finding legal information. The goal for the wiki is to reduce that level of anxiety. In the meantime, the creation of the wiki is causing me undue stress! Fortunately my collaborator is both very knowledgeable and very Library 2.0 savvy.

I need to pick up the pace on my contribution to the project, so this quest is very timely. Once we reach a certain point in the wiki, we'll make it available for staff to look at and improve it themselves or make suggestions for how we can improve it. Then it will be up to all of us to keep it current and useful.

Right now, my biggest problem is organizing the content. How do we present complicated information in a logical, understandable, and useful fashion? The layout and mechanics of using the wiki are momentarily of secondary concern to me.

We're using pbwiki for this project, and my collaborator did the hard work of setting up the wiki. I won't pretend that the few contributions I have made to it have been easy, but I am confident I'll master the mechanics of it.

My experience with the wiki so far, though, is that the mechanics aren't quite as transparent and obvious as I would like. But, hey, it's not a perfect world. And a wiki seems the perfect platform for this project, both in its creation, for staff input, and for everyone to help keep it useful and current.

I realize I am just rambling on at this point as another means of procrastinating. I need to get back to work on that wiki...

Just sign me
Wikitoria for Wikis!

Quest 6, Part 2: Technorati

So how much do I have to write about Technorati to get credit for completing this part of the Quest 6?

Okay, now I know Technorati exists. This is good. This knowledge will undoubtedly come in handy.

I did a couple of searches on some professional stuff. Backed into a blog on ethics and librarianship that was just set up for a graduate course somewhere. Advanced search features work well, as they should.

Looked at some of the more popular blogs. Found many on a par with browsing the grocery list collection: interesting for a few minutes and good for procrastinating, but as mentioned in a previous post, I don't need any new diversions for procrastination.

Guess now that I've posted I'll read how others reacted to Quest 6. I aim to be inspired and entlightened by others who had a more meaningful quest than I.

I think this post is supposed to have the term tagging in it, so I'll make sure I tag it that way!

Less than del.icio.us

Have let other things take up my time than Quest 6, but I guess now I had better move forward.

Ho hum at this point with del.icio.us. Was underwhelmed with it during the TechTracks class taught by SCSL staff. Remain underwhelmed.

Part of it is that I am tired of spending as much of the day as I do in front of a computer. I have recently been working to be less plugged in, and I'm enjoying it.

Part of me says that computer technology that isn't seamless and obvious--that requires the watching of an extremely boring video--fundamentally has something wrong with it.

Another part of me is just sick of bells and whistles when I don't see any immediate benefit to me, because, as always, it is about me. [Isn't that really what socially networking is all about: me?]

I have never used bookmarks that much. I can see the benefits of del.icio.us if I used them a lot, but I don't. Just remember urls of places I visit all the time. Use search engines otherwise with a good keyword strategy. Many sites I use only to answer a specific reference question. How likely is it that I'll ever get that question again? And if I do, the site I used the first time might not give the best answer the second time.

The September 15th LJ article called "Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us" makes me feel like someone from Missouri: Show Me! I'll get on board if I see CCPL has a plan to use tagging--I'll enthusiastically get on board if the plan makes sense to me.

In the meantime, I don't find cloud tags much more than a random curiousity: A way to encourage procrastination by providing lots of diversions. I don't need any encouragement in that area.

Having said all this, the next time I have a topic to research, perhaps I'll make use of del.icio.us. But as I write this, I am secretly hoping that another option will appear that has more appeal to me.