#16 – Wikiing? Wiki-ing? Wiking?

Big fan of wikis in general. It caters to the contributive types (like tagging) but still vastly usable by the general public. Even someone like myself, who is greatly averse to tagging, is much more tempted to edit and add to articles because they’d be adding actual cohesive information, easy to interpret and digest.

Also, the functionality of wiki sites is immense. Creating hyperlinks to associated articles via their keywords is incredibly useful and feeds a broader source of information to the user without them having to look up subjects linearly. Of course, this ability could be available on every site imaginable, but wikis have fostered the idea of it, let it grow and have the idea take hold with the public.

The Library Success wiki is a great example of community knowledge. The presentation is useful, easily sorted, and most importantly easily edited to adapt for changing ideas and ideals.

The rhymes were intricate and every line was filled with alliteration and the best poetic tricks

#15 – Examining Library 2.0

The idea of Library 2.0 is backward-thinking and obsolete. It’s an attempt to jump on the bandwagon, and misses extraordinarily.

This isn’t to say they aren’t headed in the right direction. On the contrary, the idea of Library 2.0 is most useful when trying to sell the concept to those who’d reject any sort of advancement or change: it’s catchy, it’s easy to remember, and it shares its title with several other buzz phrases making headlines.

The simple fact, though, is that this is all a poor attempt to merely catch up with the public, who will no doubt be far, far ahead of us by then.

First of all, buzz terms will only refer to relevant items when the term is invented after the trend, not the other way around like Library 2.0. Just by naming this “movement” after something already established is proof positive that we are not, in fact, embracing innovation, but merely settling for a standard that is already 4 years old.

For those of us actually hoping for some semblance of innovation and advancement, this is the definition of tragedy.

People, I can trick ‘em into thinking anything