Wonderful Wikis

Greetings!

This is the last assignment for the first semester of ProjectPlay! and a reflection on wikis and their usefulness to public libraries - this one in particular. Wikis are an open, interactive, collaborative way of having conversations where input from everyone helps create a better product than any one individual could create. Wikis are like a lot of the other tools we've been exploring this semester in that they require a high degree of trust. You have to trust those who choose to interact with your wiki or blog or those who tag. Moving away from an authoritative model -- where such things as "authority control" are considered good -- to a wide-open, highly subjective model is frightening to some and exhilarating for others. And where you land on that continuum between fright and euphoria probably depends on how much you trust the public and how much you believe in the wisdom of the crowd. It will come as no surprise to my readers that I come down on the euphoric exhilarating end of the continuum. Many will say this is because I'm an idiot and don't learn from previous bad experiences with the public. But I am a true believer in democracy and believe that as a general rule the larger the number of participants, the better the decision ( recent general elections proving the exception, rather than the rule). So, inviting more people to the party will only make the party better. I have seen a wiki used for creating a strategic planning document with good effects. I have heard of libraries attempting to use one for delivering library board packet information -- which would probably work as long as board members didn't do any editing thereby creating an on-line quorum and thereby breaking open meeting law. Wikis seem a perfect venue for getting feedback and suggestions from all library staff around policies. Front line staff often have a better take on the implications of a policy and how it might play out, then the library board or administration. I think a wiki could also be used to update a strategic plan. The document could be put out there with comments about how implementation is progressing. The public would then make comments and suggestions about how to achieve those goals-- and, gasp!, even if those goals make sense. This would be a way to check to see if the public perception (that the goals have been achieved) match the library director's. Participatory libraries is what I believe the next iteration of the public library is all about. Library 2.0 will really put the public in public libraries. I can't wait to try out all the things I've learned this semester !

Ciao!

Tag, You're It !

Greetings!
This week's ProjectPlay assignment was to investigate tags on various sites such as del.icio.us and to blog about implications for public libraries. Well. When I was in library science school -- back in the days when books were replacing papyrus rolls (And you should have heard the complaints about that radical new technology then! The idea of turning a page and going from the bottom of one page to the top of the next instead of being able to continuously scroll down a page was bemoaned as the end of civilization as we knew it. But I digress.) -- the class I enjoyed the most was cataloging. I enjoyed it because there actually was a right answer (or maybe two right answers if you made your case extremely well). Unlike the rest of library science (The science part is really a misnomer because there really is nothing very scientific about it. Information systems, because they mirror the human intellect (because humans create it), tend to be organic. Searching for data is an inuititve process that runs more on hunches than repeatable, "scientific" techniques. But I digress. Again.) classifying information has a system or method to it. If you understood the system, you could correctly classify the item (ususally a book). Having a corrrect answer can be very comforting. Especially when you're a student and are looking for certainty. As I have matured, I've realized that certainty (as well as control, power, and a few other things that I can't recall right now) is an illusion. So the idea of a right answer isn't nearly as attractive to me now. All the preceeding was a very long wind up for this "pitch". I think the idea of libraries using tagging is extremely cool! I think libraries have been way too rigid about many things and that using tags and allowing tagging is a way of letting go of some of that rigidity. I think that tagging may be to cataloging what the King James Version of the Bible was to the authority of the church. Tagging is a fine example of participatory democracy. The people get to speak and the power of the group gets expressed by "voting" the terms that make sense to you. This is also language evolving right in front of our eyes. It is so cool! If a given term makes sense to describe a book you just read you tag it with that word. If others see that term and it makes sense to them, that tag gets used more and more. The more the tag is used the more people become aware of that tag and they start to use it too. This is language evolving dynamically. I also like the idea of tagging because I truly believe the group is smarter than the individuals that make up the group. Having many minds creating a "subject heading" allows all the various subtleties of language to be expressed in the tags all the members of the group assign. The more the merrier, and the more the better the tag's definition is. Tags on library websites is the obvious way to go. Tag clouds will take people to what others find fascinating and will let everyone who wants to, participate in the social network the cloud creates. I think I'll quit now.
Until next time, play on!