#18 (Week 8). Look at some online productivity candy

Day 1203

Willy is already familiar with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. The Google applications work great and he has them on his Google Personalized Home. But the Zoho tools look even more sweet.

With all of these applications to choose from, Willy feels like a kid in a candy factory.

Willy Wonka, Willy weally needs you!

This Bloated Willy posting was published from Zoho Writer and edited at Blogger.

#17 (Week 7) Go Play in the Wiki SandBox

Day 1211

Willy got carried away and made his own wiki: 1265days: A Willy Makit Wiki. Check it out and see the Willy behind the Willy.

#16 (Week 7) Learn about wikis and discover innovative ways that libraries are using them

Day 1212

Today Willy wants to dive into controversy. Many teachers and librarians do not feel students should use wikis because they are "not authoritative" and that the information may not be accurate. Willy happens to think the accuracy is near-par with authoritative sources. What a wiki lacks in authority it makes up for in number of eyeballs of knowledgeable people who take ownership of the articles. But more importantly, accuracy does not matter!

Willy is a dinosaur--a pre-Internet librarian. Before the Internet, when a client approached him with an information need and neither of them knew much about the topic, the first stop was to the encyclopedia. Students would say that their teacher did not want them to use encyclopedias. Ever willing to corrupt young minds, Willy would tell the students to just not tell their teachers and don't cite from the encyclopedia. The reason for using the encyclopedia was not to get content for a paper but to learn enough about the subject to focus their research to locate the authoritative stuff that can be used for the paper. A twenty-minute investment with an encyclopedia could cut down hours of unfocused searching.

Wikis are just forms of encyclopedias. Most wiki articles are well written with overviews, vocabulary, names, dates and bibliographies. But if a wiki article is not completely accurate, it does not matter--the article will almost always help to find good authoritative sources. As the authoritative sources are found any mis-information in the wiki article will be corrected by the authoritative sources.

I once heard research described as an iterative process. You start with what you know, and do the best you can. As you find information, you learn and use that information to help focus further searching. Wikis are a great place to start the research process, not to end the process, but to start it.

On the list of wikis Willy was suppose to look at, the Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki looked interesting. Willy thinks he may want to become a contributor.

#15 (Week 6) Read Perspectives on Web 2.0. Future of Libraries

Day 1215

Willy says . . .
Go with the flow, but remain centered.

#14 (Week 6). Explore Technorati and learn about tags

Day 1216

Willy visited Technorati and "claimed" (registered) his blog. He was so excited, he was already ranked at: 2,710,648. Don't tell Willy but that puts him at dead last.

His tags are: 1265days, sjlibrary2.0, willy makit. He tried a search on the tag 1265days and found out that there is nothing in the known universe tagged 1265days. How deflating--from hope to dispair in one easy click. Oh, well, it probably takes awhile for the tags to be indexed. . . he says hopefully. If you want to help Willy out, click on the "Add this Blog to my Technorati Favorites" link located somewhere on the left edge.

What Willy learned about tags . . .
Spelling is everyting

Interlude 6

Day 1216

Blogging about the social bookmaking sites reminded Willy that he was suppose to report back on using the Google Personalized Homepage. It works well although he did have an interesting moment. More precisely, about one hundred and eighty interesting moments . . . .

There is this link on the side called "Add stuff »". He added stuff--250 stuffs. He did not realize, until he went to his home page that each link opens up a channel to another web site. So going to his home page now opened up 250 channels. It took about 45 minutes for his "personalized" homepage to load. He tried to delete all of the channels but as soon as he refreshed the page, all 250 channels came back. It took about three hours to fix. Willy has seen many things on the web, but this was the first time he ever saw a web page revel in the throes of constipation.

What Willy learned . . .
Moderation in all things

#13 (Week 6). Tagging, Del.icio.us and social bookmaking sites

Day 1216

...and social bookmaking sites? Spellchecker strikes again. Willy's experience. . . when email replying apologies to patrons he always misspell the word "inconvenience." The ever helpful spellchecker always turns his words into "sorry for the incontinence. . ."

When Willy started his foray into Del.icio.us., he found out that FireFox has an extension that allows for uploading existing bookmarks into Del.icio.us. Great he thought, he doesn't have to do any work--he'll just import his bookmarks and have a fully developed Del.icio.us site.

Forty-five minutes and three thousand bookmarks later, he realized there were things in there that perhaps should not be exposed to the world. He knows that they were set as private but he did not want to take a chance. Smart boy, this is not a website designed for private bookmarks. And, no--there was nothing salacious--you dirty old (wo)man. It turns out the only practical way to delete all of the bookmarks from Del.icio.us is to delete the account and start over--drastic but it works.

Willy also realized that most of his FireFox bookmarks are really detritus from years past. So he is starting over. He'll keep his FireFox bookmarks as backup but will form new ones in Del.icio.us as needed. He also realized that he is not that dependent on bookmarks anyway. He finds it faster to Google the name of the needed website. So his bookmarks will probably be much fewer and for more arcane things leaving Google as the primary way to get to a site.