Learning 2.0--Wikipedia: Ms. Grammarian has a field day

I'm a dabbler in Wikipedia.  I usually add links, citations where needed, or correct grammar.  For a long while in college I dreamt of working as a Ms. Grammarian, a copywriter, but the field practically disappeared.  (Just check the spelling on your next newspaper to see).  So, Wikipedia articles gives me my 'fix' to correct other people's grammar or provide more complete citations.  Plus it's not as irritating as insisting people say, "whom" instead of "who"...yes, we all know these people.

Wikipedia editing can also be great practice for online searching for a librarian.  We often teach students about the importance of citations, but we can practice it ourselves in Wikipedia articles actual people may read.


On what to tell students about Wikipedia:
I usually tell students that Wikipedia is a great place to start researching a topic they are unfamiliar with, but by no means should they cite it as a source.
When I get the chance, I'd like to have a citations workshop for adding citations to Wikipedia.  It's a great way for students to learn to conform to citation styles and also to let them feel they're contributing to the world of knowledge.
I met another librarian who plays a fun Wikipedia game with her students: the challenge is to get from X article to Y article using only internal Wikipedia hyperlinks.

Extra: Wikipedia's 'dirty little secret' that helps us all

A community "of about 800 people has emerged to curate and administer Wikipedia as needed. These administrators are granted special priveleges: undoing a vandal's work by reverting pages to previous versions, freezing pages that are rapidly flipping back and forth in an edit war, even banning a contributor because he repeatedly restored edits without explaining why.
This type of hierarchy may be anathema to bottom-up purists, but without it, Wikipedia would not work."

-Weinberger, David. (2007). Everything is miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder.  NY: New York. p.139

Hands-on introduction to local special collection

In mid-November, I joined San Diego librarians in an archiving adventure and special collections tour led by Richard Crawford of the SDPL.

Check out Daria's description:
SLA blog post on the volunteer archiving work party

This was such a great way to get to know the ways public libraries curate local history. Rick Crawford, special collections librarian, also gave us an extensive tour of the basement levels of the library, where staff pages scurry and the remaining Serra Co-op workers live their days. 
Even with my electronic serials background, I'm still amazed at how little electronic indexing is done for old newspapers. This essentially means access is dead for direct research. In the San Diego Public Library's basement, where only staff are permitted, lie the only card catalog indexes for pre-1950s San Diego newspapers. This means that patrons cannot glimpse at the article titles, subjects, at all. They must ask librarians to do all early newspaper research themselves.
If these were digitized it would be a boon to researchers, but the amount of money and manpower to transform said index into electronic form does not provide enough incentive! 
Even if just the indexes were electronic this would be a huge help.
I'm sure the librarians would welcome a rising star cataloger/database architect to create an electronic index out of the card catalog! Anyone?

reBlog from Joseph Esposito under: The Scholarly Kitchen

I found this fascinating quote today:

Yes, yes, of course I have a library card, but that card is to my hometown public library.  I love our little library, but what I really want is remote access to the digital collections of the University of California,  one of whose campuses is a mere 100 yards from my house.  As I do not have a university affiliation, the only way I can use the digital collections is to go on campus and use a computer within the walls of the library.  This would not be so bad if I were involved with a research project that required me to spend the better part of a day at the library, but for the most part my research needs are one-shot questions — the need to look up a single article from a journal, perhaps, or a desire to check out the etymology of one word in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Remote access would be a godsend — or a Santa-send.Joseph Esposito under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Dec 2009

You should read the whole article.

Learning Web 2.0 lesson 4: Your answers for Activity 3

Lesson 4's reflections were submitted via a Google Form for Activity 3 instead of our respective blogs.
If you'd like to see what your classmates thought about using Google Docs, explore the spreadsheet below to see everybody's answers to the survey questions.
You could get some great ideas about how you can use Google Docs with each other!

Google Dashboard: Now You Know What Google Knows About You

Attention Learning Web 2.0 students!
You've started using several Google products like Blogspot, Google Docs, and Google Reader. There's a new option for seeing what information Google stores about your activity.

Google Dashboard: Now You Know What Google Knows About You

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Library 101: Resources to Know

From a project quickly gaining momentum, the founders, Michael Porter and David Lee King, spelled out the basics of what skills have been needed, are needed, and will be needed for the next 20 years.
This is a great primer to bookmark, since it's full of hyperlinks.
Library 101

Don't be fooled by the silly, silly song on the project's home page.

Books by Rachel Singer Gordon, guru of new wave librarian jobs

Many are beginning to realize the importance of having a librarian with IT training on staff. They didn't tell us about this in library school!
So, if you're like me and you want to some good books to jumpstart your professional development, look to Rachel Singer Gordon.

Even if you're a veteran, these are great staples to have on your reference shelf. Plus, they're more fun to read than those dry textbooks from MLS days. That is, if there are any practical ones for web and computer library work...

Rachel Singer Gordon: amazon's author page