Library Voice

You want to know about wikis? Hear it from the Wiki Woman herself, Meredith Farkas in this OPAL event:

Thursday, January 12, 2006 beginning at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 2:00 Central, 1:00 Mountain, noon Pacific, and 8:00 p.m. GMT:
Wiki World: An Introduction
Wikis are democratizing the World Wide Web in a way that no other Web application has. A wiki allows a group of people to collaboratively develop website with no knowledge of HTML or other markup languages. Any member of the wiki community can add to or edit anyone else’s content, which is what makes Wikis so revolutionary and so controversial. Wikis are being used by librarians as knowledge repositories, subject guides, conference planning vehicles, and Intranets, but they could be used in any situation where quick and easy online collaboration is a goal. This session will explain what wikis are, how they could be used in libraries, and what to consider before creating one of your own. Presented by Meredith Farkas, Distance Learning Librarian at the Kreitzberg Library atNorwich University in Vermont. Meredith is the author of the blog Information Wants To Be Free and the creator and administrator of the ALA Chicago 2005 Wiki and Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. Sponsored by the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center.
This OPAL event will be held in the Auditorium.

I got many of my ideas about the Biz Wiki by reading Meredith’s blog. She’s full of knowledge and loves to share, so if this topic is of interest to you, join the free presentation. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Library Voice entered the biblioblogosphere on January 4, 2005. It has been a very fun and rewarding year. I started this blog hoping to contribute in some small way to the library world. I had been reading a number of great library blogs, and I thought that I could add something to the conversation around the biblioblogosphere. It is my wish that something I’ve written has helped a librarian or library in some way. I know that throughout this endeavor of reading and writing, I have learned a great deal about libraries, the library profession, about technology, and about myself. A few examples of the wonderful things that I’ve learned this past year are as follows:

1. IM Reference Really Works!
2. Wikis Make Great Subject and Research Guides
3. Bloggers Love to Share
4. Librarians are everywhere
5. Librarians are cool

Probably the most rewarding thing about this past year of blogging is the number of great folks that I’ve met along the way. The biblioblogosphere is all about sharing, and I’ve been fortunate to have a number of opportunities to “talk shop” with colleagues around the country. I’ve learned that despite our different institutions, cultures, or work environments, we all have the same goal to serve our patrons better. Many of us are  looking at the same goal in different ways, which is fantastic for generating new ideas. I’ll be the first to tell you that the ideas behind my two proud accomplishments for the year– starting an IM reference service and creating the Biz Wiki– were born in the biblioblogosphere.   Great ideas can come through collaboration  and sharing, and I encourage you to look for ways to share what you’re doing.  If you’re not a blogger, that’s okay.   You can share by posting a comment on someone else’s blog, participating in a listserv, or taking part in a discussion at a conference.  If you are a blogger and have been sharing, keep up the good work. You are helping to contribute to a thriving community of collaboration.  Regardless of how you share ideas, it really doesn’t matter how you communicate your ideas to the community, what matters is that you actually share them with others.   You never know who is listening and what impact your ideas may have on our common goal of better serving our patrons.

Thanks for a great year with Library Voice, and I look forward to another year of sharing and learning with you.

Nick Bradbury, the developer of FeedDemon, has given us a few peaks of version 2.0. I’ve been a user off and on of both Bloglines, FeedDemon, and Sharpreader. My weapon of choice for the past few months has been FeedDemon. I still have a Bloglines account, and I use it periodically, but right now, FeedDemon is the aggregator for me. FeedDemon is a desktop RSS reader with a two-or-three pane interface.  It looks very similar to Outlook, Thunderbird, and about every other desktop email client.   FeedDemon is full customizable, and I can change the way I view my RSS feeds by employing a different cascading style sheet. I can save blog posts that I like to News Bins, and every post that I have in my aggregator is searchable. The reall beauty of FeedDemon is its speed, which is why I went back to FeedDemon from Bloglines in the first place. I had been a loyal user of Bloglines, but it was getting too slow for me at times. I’m using RSS to get information quickly, and if my reader can’t keep up, then it’s not doing its job. FeedDemon does keep up, as it is a very fast application. Because all feeds are downloaded to my computer, I don’t have to wait for a web page to change to look at another group of feeds. Switching back and forth between my various feed folders is very quick and easy.  FeedDemon runs $29.95, so it’s not free like Bloglines.  However, there is a trial version available if you’d like to check it out.  Unfortunately, for my Apple friends, there is not a version available for Macintosh.