Sandpit

Playing around in the sandpit and exploring the favourites options was fun. I chose Favourite holiday spot and added my favourite to it. I opted not to add an edit note or "Join this Wiki". I enjoyed the comment that a wiki is like a potluck dinner. I didn't like way the 8 Wetpaint videos were presented - a bit obscure and a waste of time, but the others were fine.

Wikid

What power to be able to go into someone else's wiki and correct, change, delete, update, add your own thoughts, ideas and knowledge even though you know someone may come in and edit or delete that masterpiece of information that you've just created.
Seriously Via Wiki seems a great way to collaborate and share knowledge with others of like interests and as well as in libraries.
Some ways in which wikis can be used in libraries are in library reference services for knowledge management - collaborating and pooling knowledge with information coming from the user back to the library in the form of participation and feedback; a wiki could be used in Readers' advisory and subject guides which facilitate customer feedback and can be edited by patrons who can add newer and useful resources which reflect the users' interests.
Libraries can call on customers' knowledge to improve library services, e.g. developing library collections which better serve community needs.
I particularly enjoyed the Book Lovers wiki from Princeton Public Library with their book reviews and Index to reviews (found one The Bookseller of Kabul which needed editing). I also found useful and clearly explained were Libraryjournal.com and the Library Success link.

Embracing change

My mind won't stray too far into the future - I'm not into science fiction or fantasy, but change is already taking us outside the Library square. I don't see a library with no books - books are bright, colourful, attractive, informative - "Don't judge a book by its cover" - but isn't that the first appeal? "This looks a good book" - and I don't see myself curling up with a good computer.
The important goals for libraries of the future include reaching out into the community, embracing constant change and with an emphasis on sharing, making libraries the focal point of the community. Putting users together with information requires a technology which will meet the users' needs. In our digital lifestyle we have already MP3s, TV, Laptops, cell phones, cameras, ipods etc. From one of your links I found libraryjournal.com interesting and Web 2.0 features clearly defined. Ann Arbor District Library has turned its homepage into a blog where customers can share their favourite authors, titles, genres, write reviews, create tags and assign ratings. Customers always like to know what others are reading - just see how they browse the returns shelves. Philadelphia uses its blog for "news, events and discussion". Thus library users can participate in the services libraries offer and the way they are used. NSL is already on the way to embracing Web 2.0 and is implementing programmes e.g. information literacy, to encourage and support reading; is committed to providing access to good online resources, with realisable aims and objectives; is continually improving technology resources and access to electronic data e.g. Opacs, public internet computers, and is constantly upskilling staff to meet the challenge. North Shore Libraries is committed to providing space for people to meet. Our user education is resulting in our users issuing their own books, accessing the library website from home, requesting items and searching for information. We reach out into the community with local history and our housebound service. I'm sure we will be a New Age Library.

Ignorati

I explored Technorati as far as I could without the help of the guided tour video which wouldn't play for me. Perhaps my patience ran out and I didn't wait long enough. My directory search for Web 2.0 yielded 721 results and same search in Blogs yielded 338, as for Tags - didn't find a Tags button. I expected to find a screen full of useful tags but found tags only for specific searches completed. It took me a while to find the Popular button, and once I'd moved from there, and tried to find it again all the buttons had changed as they seem to every time you search under a different heading. In the directory I clicked on Web 2.0 under Technology which sent me to Blogs and a message "Please try again later". I'm sure with a little direction I would have fared better, but there we are.

Delishus

The advantage of Bookmarking for me would be to find websites for my particular interests, bookmark and tag them, keep them together and share them with other people with similar interests who may well provide me with better sites I didn't already know about. I explored several bookmarks including Random bookmarks where I found e.g. "Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers" which had the following tags: language/Norwegian/linguistics/learning/ and in Danbury Library found our "Mister Pip" with these tags: Booker Prize/civil war/coming of age/childhood/New/Zealand fiction/Ya/Young adult/Papua New Guinea /Charles Dickens.
Libraries can create reading lists, book reviews and are already being used in many libraries. Bookmarks can make a student's research more productive and can be a good place to begin the research.

Still feeding

This has taken hours of exploration and frustration, but it's also easy to get sidetracked. Topix.net - I was surprised at the amount displayed on one screen - largest news community on the web - users able to edit the news and comment on everything - judging by the number of comments this would seem to be a much visited site. Some of the comments remind me of those heard on talk back radio, senseless and bigoted. I found the site easy to use. Syndic8 -I didn't really come to grips with this one, seemed to waste time getting nowhere.
Technorati.com -Interesting blogs on current affairs but I was put off by Google ads. I chose to search under Lifestyle, Photos and Blogs. Here I found an Italian couple blogging their way around the USA and followed them for a while. I clicked on some tags to view photos (Olympics, Obama, Business). Blog directory easy to follow. Found everything from George Clooney to Martha Stewart, Georgia and the Olympics. When Internet Explorer closed down the site I decided it was time for bed.

Entangled in bloglines

Hours spent trying to disentangle myself - opened and read all the links to newsfeeds in first part of Discovery exercise, but major problem has been in setting up Bloglines account as it won't recognise me - they say the have emailed me but that's in the ether somewhere. However, from what I've gleaned so far about newsfeeds it is a quick way to read headlines of important articles which may interest you from electronic resources, journals, newspapers et al? I have already used this technology personally before I really knew what it was about. My sister rang to tell me about a local photographic display in her home town. Although she read me the article, I wanted to search the newspaper online for said article using, I thought, relevant keywords and came up with nothing. Then I spied the RSS icon. I quickly scanned the news items and was overjoyed to find the complete article. The keywords I used to search bore no resemblance to the words in the article headline. Librarians could use news feeds for lists of new books for customers, book reviews (Amazon, Radio New Zealand), to provide announcements (events, services) and other things I haven't thought of yet.

Technology

Technology and I are not good mates, but I do have a digital camera which I enjoy using, but mostly in the "aim and shoot" mode. I have not yet explored everything the menu can offer but mostly this suffices for what I want. It is wonderful being able to delete the unsuccessful pics and try again. Needing no film is another plus especially when travelling. The photos are easily downloaded to a memory stick and emailed to family. Organizing them Flickr style will make them more manageable. The biggest hassle with it is the length of time it takes to charge the batteries and yes, I do have another set. When travelling it is also advisable to have more than one adaptor for situations where you leave them behind in some foreign hotel - lost 2 that way.

Mashups mosaics and mmm...?

Mashups I relate to a kind of collage - too messy for me, I like minimalism. In Big Huge Labs I checked out fd's Flickr Toys and liked in particular Mosaic maker which I felt was something I would most likely do with family or travel photos. I found a wonderful mosaic of Obama (Barack) and now I can't find it any more - oops - so I haven't got the actual link to it. Top cameras I liked because I found mine there, Trading card I may also use and Jigsaw could be fun too.

flickr frustration

I dare not calculate the time spent just on Q4. I seem to have explored my fingers sore. I found many interesting things to do if one had the time and the passion for the fashion. Found some great photos in "interestingness" and particularly admired "waterlily on black" by Siebe. I thought I had the link but wasn't able to find the photo easily using it. I searched for it under suggested tags but the number of photos displayed was astronomically huge and I decided to search using the title of the photo. This particular photo seems to be copyrighted so I couldn't post it. I'm going to leave it here and turn my attention to the next ex.
Well I seem to have messed this one up so I'm adding some extra bits. Enjoyed my Flickring experience, learning about online photosharing. I saw the advantages of uploading photos for safe keeping, organising them into collections and sets and tagging them for easy access later, even putting them on a map - very handy for travel and family pics. I noticed that the lists of tags for one photo can be long and range from specific to general. I enjoyed searching the photos and for my photograph I used tags Nevada, Joshua tree, desert. The Joshua trees can be found in the Moave Desert in Nevada. Here is the link to my chosen Joshua tree photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinhole/455286001
http://www.flickr.com/photos/siebe/539408151/