Week 13 Reading Notes

1) John Blossom (2009). What makes social media tick: seven secrets of social media. Content Nation, chapter 2. Wiley Publishing Inc. Blossom_Content_Nation_7_Secrets_Social_Media.pdf 
This was a very interesting article packed with information about what makes social media work and the seven secrets of social media. Until of late, I would not have considered myself a computer person.  I would not have known what social media  and "user generated content" was, not because I did not hear it often, but because I chose to block out the terms and the ideas.  I am now more interested and somewhat more knowledgeable.  I found it very interesting that social media is a peer to peer medium. I have heard of Eb 2.0 but did not previously know that Web 2.0 includes wiki, weblog, and other collaborative tools.
I am very excited to be in the "know" and to be able to take the steps to continue learning.
Listing the publishing goals and the social aspects for each topic was helpful. The 7 Secrets of social media listed in the article gave an interesting perspective.

2) Charles Allan, “Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program: Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons, C&RL News, April 2007 Vol. 68, No. 4 Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program.htm 

Let me start off by saying I agree that library instruction and wikis make good partners.  I have minimal knowledge of wikis and that knowledge I got from my 13 year old son who had to create a wiki for school.  He helped me create a wiki but I do not know much more than the fact that I have a wiki page somewhere out there in the great server in the sky!  I am excited to learn from this article that it is made for sharing information and that you actually invite people to participate.  I look forward to the next lab.
I also copied and sent this email to the staff Guthrie Memorial Library where I work.  I think this is something we should be doing.

 3) Xan Arch, “Creating the academic library folksonomy: Put social tagging to work at your institution” C&RL News, February 2007 Vol. 68, No. 2 http://www.mendeley.com/research/creating-academic-library-folksonomy/?mrr_wp=0.1

Well, well,well!! I have never heard of "folksonomya taxonomy" or social tagging!  These are very interesting "ideas/ concepts". It is interesting how social tagging allows a person to create bookmarks for web sites and can actually save them on line.  I could definitely relate when they talked about not knowing what and where you saved.
I found it interesting that folksonomya taxonomy was created by ordinary people and I plan to investigate del.icio.us, oneof the best known tagging sites, further.

4) Jimmy Wales: “How a ragtag band created Wikipedia” http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html

What a great source of information.  Jimmy Wales assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers" to manage his wili media foundation.  I like the idea that evryone on the planet can get a free encyclopedia. It is amazing that a top 50 website, more popular than New York Times and run by 1 employee  is run with a bandwidth expense of $5,000.00.

I found it interesting that there were many misinterpretations about what Jimmy Wales says and what is reported to have been said. 

I will say that in the past, prior to hearing this information, I believed wikipedia to be an invalid source of information because it could be edited so freely.  Idid  not realize how well it was monitored and I certainly had no idea it was monitored by volunteers.