World's most beautiful libraries

Courtesy of a link provided by Donna Mazziotti in the PubLib listserv, here is a link to a blog posting that contains photographs of the world's most beautiful libraries, and they are stunning. The blog itself is called "Curious Expeditions: Travelling and exhuming the extraordinary past" and seems to be the chronicle of two travelers roaming the world. It's stylish, well written and has great pictures- I added it immediately to my Yahoo home page.

check it out

Recipients of a SirsiDynix Building Better Communities Awards:
(among others, but these two I want to check out)

• Lincoln Trail Libraries System – The library’s “PolyTalk” program is an innovative service to help Illinois libraries of all types reach out to people with limited English language skills.

SUNLINK: Florida Department of Education – SUNLINK uses a variety of technologies to improve access to information to Florida K-12 students, parents, administrators and library media specialists. To learn even more about the Building Better Communities Awards recipients, visit www.sirsidynix.com/awards.

Wikis- what works and what doesn't

As an exercise for the class, we were instructed to look at six examples of wikis that are being used in libraries. They are being used for subject guides, electronic resource guides, staff information, reference guides and OCLC's user comments system (to be released apparently in September, according to their website).

After looking at the examples, I would conclude that wikis are useful as a way to collect, organize, present and update particular information. The UConn staff wiki was particularly well organized, and obviously useful (for the staff, that is). I also liked the St. Joseph County Pulic Library's Subject Guide wiki which was very well organized, frequently updated and easy to navigate.

One of the features of a wiki is the possibility for user interaction- something that seemed to be missing from all of these examples. I think the chief value is if multiple people in an organization need to contribute material, a wiki is a convenient way to collaborate.

Library Reviews: PLCMC

Charlotte & Mecklenberg Public Library: (besides having a way too long name!) most of the links from the home page were non-functional on my visit this morning, which, in my opinion, is a fatal error. I have just checked back, and they appear to be working now, so maybe I just happened upon a rare glitch- hopefully, because non-working links are a fatal error in my opinion.

The Democratization of Culture

I must say that I am enjoying my embedded videos. I just checked in to see what YouTube had put up there, and clicked on a rather nice poetry reading. This may be the real use of these things- a constant trolling for new, relevant and interesting content, not necessarily from traditional sources. We have all become accustomed to getting our stuff through "authorized channels"- department stores, newspapers, published sources and (dare I say?) libraries. In this model, the validation process is built into the production and distribution process, the theory being akin to peer-review for scholarly works or market forces in the case of books and movies. The reasoning is that these businesses are in it for the money, and the money is in what people want: ergo the publishers and producers are giving us what we want. BUT are they? I think the whole Web 2.0 thing proves that we are not getting what we want from the traditional sources.

After viewing some quite professional music on the Baeble site, seeing some quite amazing videos and photographs on YouTube and Flickr, it occurs to me that what we are really witnessing here is a total democratization of culture.

If it's still up there, check out- ....darn, it's gone. Now I'll have to search YouTube to find it again, but I will.

Wait- it's back! It's called "When Mystery Winks and Smiles". If it floats by, please click on it and it will play. This is not actually immediately obvious on the widget, and may not work in all browsers, but it sure is fun.

Library 2.0 Review

As per Infopeople's suggestion, I am reviewing these libraries using Web 2.0 technologies:
Charlotte and Mecklinburg County
Ann Arbor District Library
Denver Public Library
Seattle Public Library
In particular, I will examine how they are using RSS feeds, podcasting, MySpace and Second Life to reach their patrons. (I'm listing them here so I can take advantage of the hyperlinking all in one place- this kind of research usually leads to many open browsers, and a bewildered feeling that I've lost track of what I started out to do).

I think I will start first with RSS- I have feeds on my homepage, and have created a bloglines accouint some time ago. Time to go back and refresh my memory and then examine how these libraries are using this technology.