wikis

Library unconference for Western Australia

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I’m involved in planning a library unconference for Western Australia, hopefully at the State Library of Western Australia and hopefully in the first half of the year. You are welcome to join in – you don’t have to work in a library. You can just be library-curious.

The Yarra Plenty folks look like they had a ball with theirs a couple of weeks ago. Michelle and Genevieve were there.

Yarra Plenty unconference

Uploaded to Flickr by YarraPlentyLibrary on 2 March 2007

Topics covered on the day were:

  • Web 2.0 = library 2.0?
  • Wikis
  • RFID in libraries
  • Literary blogging
  • Information literacy : overcoming fear
  • OPACS and mashups
  • Library education
  • Young people social networking
  • Virtual services universal? /sharing resources
  • Second life tour
  • Re-engineering reference, IM and virtual reference
  • Library 2.0 : 23 things program
  • Tagging reader recommendations : creative tools
  • Convincing stakeholders of our worth

For our planning group, defining success was really interesting. We’ve decided that if people come away inspired and think that the time spent was valuable, then the event will have been successful. We’re not basing success on the numbers of people who turn up, or the money we make, or how orderly the proceedings.

The unconference wiki contains this information so far:

You can subscribe to the RSS feed for changes to the wiki or to the unconfwalib google group to receive unconference planning emails.

Walking the wiki talk

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I’m beginning to think all this theory I’ve been spouting in the last few months might have a grain of practical application. The Library2.0 Orthodoxy that’s making more sense is “wikis are useful”.

The LINT mob use a wiki to track our procedures and history. I used a wiki to plan a long family holiday in September – it was great to click on the links for phone numbers of places we were staying. Both times I was very self-consciously “using a wiki”.

This evening, however, I wanted to keep a record of some email responses to a question I’ve asked on a google list. I want to analyse and re-packaged them into dot points. Without even thinking, and in the same way I would have once opened a WORD document….I reached for a wiki. I’ve installed TikiWiki because I know how to use it. I have gazed lovingly at drupal, but I’m just in no mood to learn again.

I didn’t use something like google documents and spreadsheets, because ultimately I want to have the summary somewhere that I can share with interested people.

Come to think of it….it would be a good 3-4 months since I’ve entered anything into a WORD document..apart from my paysheet at work. Same goes for Open Office Writer at home.

I am opening Notepad more often. I’ve finally learned that anything I want to cut and paste into WordPress should be pasted into some kind of text editor, before cutting it again and pasting into WordPress. Saves hours of searching for the one rogue tag that has turned my whole sidebar upsidedown.

It’s insidious and useful, this Web2.0.