I wish there weren't so many American sources used in this training program, surely there are similar examples of what we are learning that have been done by Australians? So many of the links are to US sites as well, I wish it could be a bit customised for us Aussie students or at least maybe a range of overseas sites apart from just USA. Makes me feel like I'm doing a correspondence course through one of those shonky US midwestern unis that will post you your degree once you send US$10000.
But I digress, the wookiepedia was cleverly titled. I also selected the Princeton one because I've been thinking about book clubs lately. Marion RB mentioned to me that the Library might set up a regular Book Club event as part of its public programs. When I've been trying to think of how blogs could be useful at work it occurred to me that maybe a staff book club could run via a blog. But as for wikis, one could have been useful when Brian Fletcher was researching his book on the history of the Mitchell Library. He researched by interviewing staff to get historical anecdotes, or that was how he conducted part of his research. People kept coming out of the woodwork with information and as he didn't know how knew what he might have been able to post a wiki with the info he had, and staff could enhance or correct the data according to their knowledge and experience and recollections. Potentially I wonder if there is an application for wikis with our catalogue records, if the records could hypothetically be duplicated into a wiki that the public could contribute their knowledge to, however we are so fussy about wanting all our public contributions correctly sourced and 100% accurate that it could become a bit of a minefield. We don't want the public accepting the speculation of other members of the public as being validated by the Library when it's not. Interesting that the German wiki encyclopedia was so accurate, in fact more accurate than the standard encyclopedia. This would suggest users only make contributions that are very high quality, so at least that is reassuring
2 comments:
Increasingly we're finding some good Aussie examples eg. our colleagues at the Powerhouse who are winning awards, but if you come across any others please send them our way. We have been looking to Europe as well and you will find some interesting examples in week 8 when we explore del.icio.us
Mylee (PLS)
Hi,
I have a blog for my Fellowship project. The idea was for staff to provide me with comments and information on the Rare books collections. I haven't had much luck yet perhaps I will ask Regina to put the address in her weekly email and the entire Library will be able to comment!
Thank you.
Maggie
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