Findability vs tagging vs traditional cataloguing

We have a collection here at Ryde which consists of Chinese books that have been donated to the library. Because they are a bit of a mixed bag with regard to quality and content, they all get grouped under the title "Chinese donation", saving on time and expense in cataloguing them properly. A problem arises when someone takes a liking to a particular book and wants to know if we have any more titles similar to it in our collection. Unfortunately we have no way of searching the donation collection through keywords, title or author.

This is where user-generated (or even library staff-generated) tags could come in handy. By tagging a book with a keyword it would make finding similar books a lot easier. Obviously you then get problems of people using inappropriate or irrelevant tags, but this would be a small price to pay to have books searchable, and the tags could be checked on occasion by staff.

Just a thought...

Tell me why I don't like Mondays.

Yes, Monday is upon us and all the 2.0 in the world can't help.

I'm hoping to have the internet connected at home some time this week, delivering me of my net-free status. Maybe once that happens I can post something of interest, because right now I have nothing. Nothing at all.

Nothing to report.

Quiet day in the library today, apart from a new display we have had installed by Questicon (I think). It's around near the lockers, and every fine minutes or so it lets out a Nu-Metal riff and a snippet of news reporting, all with the aim of educating kids on the dangers of walking in front of cars. Must see if I can get it turned down...

Hitting a power pole on the information superhighway...

...which is exactly what happened today. A car took out a power pole between us and the main branch, creating a power surge that took out the main network computers at ryde. So i arrived at work to be greeted by no internet, no catalogue, no circulation system. Fun ensued!

So we handled it fine, all of the borrowers were fine, it was all just fine.

But it just goes to show that all this web business is well and good, but you'd better know some Dewey for those times when technology fails us. Because it will.

two-point-opia

So, I've set up my blog. Pictures, feeds, links, the whole box and dice.

The next lesson for me on the web 2.0 tutorial is on wikis. I'm a great fan of wikipedia, even though we get told in our research classes to NOT use it. Thing is though, it makes a great starting point, quite often has really useful links and handy bibliographies, and can be surprisingly accurate (with attached caveat...). That being said, I've never contributed to a wiki. I have considered adding my 2 cents worth in some of the more contentious topics just for a laugh, but in the end couldn't be bothered. I may yet contribute in areas where I have some esoteric knowledge, possibly even as part of the whole 2.0 thing.

More 2.0 excitement to follow.

State Library Web 2.0

So, I've created a blog as part of the web 2.0 tutorials.
I guess that makes a me a two-point-opian, which is a term which I stole from some other blog (possibly Annoyed Librarian) and which I rather like.

So I think I'm at about week 4, and coping pretty well. I'm familiar with pretty much everything we've covered, having had a flickr page for a few years and pretty much living on the web since the mid-to-late 90's when I struggled along with a 14.4k modem... Also, I've begun and abandoned (usually after the second post) more blogs than I care to think about.

RSS feeds are something that I haven't really had too much interest in before, having set up a google reader page a while ago then ignoring it for a while. Serendipitously, the week on RSS feeds coincided with me moving into a place without an internet connection, which has made my google reader a little more important in catching up on my frequently visted blogs in the short space of time I now manage to find for interwebz-related malarky.

So this is the blog I started for this whole 2.0 thing. I also have a flickr page here: flickr.com, with a couple of shots from around the library.
There's a pic from the library (West Ryde Public Library) just up at the top of the page. That's Russell at the desk. It's ok, I got him to sign a waiver to allow his image to be posted to the web. Also, we took a blood oath, but that's unrelated to web 2.0.