Hi, Folks! Exploration 8 - Social Bookmarking Sites and Folksonomies

I'll have to admit, I didn't know much about bookmarking sites and folksonomies before reading the explorations material. The first time I heard co-workers talk about del.icio.us, I thought it was a site for recipes. (I know: clueless.)

After spending waaaaaaaay too much time floating around del.icio.us, I first did a search for "Horror Fiction" and came up with what will undoubtably become one of my favorite sites, Monster Librarian. There were tons of other sites as well, eating up even more of my precious time.

A search for "Writing YA Fiction" wasn't as satisfying. Only a couple of really useful sites came up, plus Stephenie Meyer's website. (Oh joy.) Another search for "Weird Fiction" was wonderful. Had to stop; didn't want to.

I honestly don't know that many patrons would be interested in bookmarking, but I'll certainly mention it to those I think might be. I'm certainly going to use it, forcing my wife to change the sign over my office door from "Geek" to "King Geek."

Exploration 7: Wikis

I recently graduated from LATI (Whoot!), where pretty much everything was communicated via wiki. (We used pbwiki.) I found it relatively painless to use and pretty hard to screw up, unless you got knocked off by forces beyond your control. (Not a good thing when you're uploading assignments.)

My extended family of eight has always had a tough time with our Christmas lists, so last year I suggested we use a wiki. I researched several and found WetPaint to be more to my liking than any other, so that's what we used.

The first thing I did was email a link to Wikis in Plain English to everyone in the family. (It explains wikis a lot better than I ever could.) Everybody was really pleased to find that they could create their own Christmas list and even link to the item on a store's website. After that, other family members could edit the lists, marking the items that had already been purchased, eliminating the chances of purchasing duplicates. (Always a problem for us on Christmas morning!) Everyone agreed that this was a much better method than firing emails back and forth, hoping that everyone that needed to see them actually did see them.

Our family's hooked. Wikis are the way to go, man. Don't fear the wiki.

Exploration 6: Online Office Tools

When I first saw the word Zoho, the first thing I thought of was Led Zeppelin's fourth album, which is sometimes called Zoso. Anyway, I digress....


Zoho is actually a pretty user-friendly way to create documents. It's much easier to use than Microsoft Word (Hey, what isn't?), especially in manipulating pictures and tables. I'm not sure how much I would use Zoho, but it's nice to know it's there. Would it be something patrons might be interested in? Possibly. It's certainly something I'd be willing to tell them about if they're thinking of posting/sharing documents.

Or maybe they'd be interested in doing the "Misty Mountain Hop."

Exploration 5: Library Thing

Okay, so it's been, what, five months since I've been on Web 2.0? I was busy with LATI and I was told "Do LATI first!!! Do it!!! ARRRRRRGGGGGH!!!" So now I'm back.

LibraryThing is a great way to keep track of your books. Here's my LibraryThing page if you'd like to check it out. As much as I like LibraryThing, I like Good Reads even better. It's more social than LibraryThing, although you can leave comments on both sites. Good Reads is a little more flexible and easier to control. It's also completely free no matter how many books you post, whereas LibraryThing will allow you to post up to 200 books for free. Still, I check LibraryThing just about every day. I know = Nerd Alert....