I'll take Diigo Please

After learning about these two social bookmarking sites, it seems to me that they would both be great resources for storing and sharing favorite websites online. However, out of pure convenience for myself, I would chose to work with Diigo over Del.icio.us, the main reason being that Del.icio.us doesn't comply with the Google e-mailing accounts. I didn't want to create yet another e-mailing account just so that I could use Del.icio.us.

Diigo also seems to have more features that would be very helpful with research. Some of the tools that can be utilized on Diigo include highlighting, sticky notes, listing, and tagging. I think that highlighting could be very beneficial when working on a research paper. With this handy tool, you can (1) highlight text that you want to quote or refer to in your research project, and (2) be able to find it easily without wasting time scanning the page for it all over again.

Make lists and tagging items on websites is also great when you start sharing information with other people (i.e. your students, school administration, teachers, and fellow librarians). And it gets even better: if you want to share information or links with a person who cannot access Diigo, there is no problem. You can send them the link anyway.

Diigo also makes it easy to collaborate with other people, as well as create lists and tags that are accessible to everyone. This could be a great way to get students involved with the library by helping them set up their own collaborative list of links for a specific class or research project.

The only thing with Diigo that I couldn't figure out was if it is fee-based. I assume it probably isn't, but you never know...

My LibraryThing

I LOVE LibraryThing. It was really easy to set up my own account and to start making a list of books that I have read. It is so fun to have a place where I can list all of my favorite books! I love it. Most of my books have a nice picture of the cover, which is even better. I can see all the books that I read as a little girl.

I think that LibraryThing has a lot of potential for a library website/blog/wiki. It would be great to have an account so the librarian could show new arrivals, works from a featured author, and/or books related to the theme of the month (Black History Month, Women's Month, Thanksgiving, Halloween, etc. etc.). It's an interactive way to show off books without actually "listing" them.

LibraryThing is something that I will definitely keep using after this class. And I LOVE seeing my favorite books cycling on my blog!! :)

Image Generated!

Here are two images that I had some fun creating....

A What?

So, I had no idea what a wiki was until I watched the Wiki's in Plain English Video (which, by the way, I thought was kind of funny:). And I still don't know exactly what we are going to be doing with our wikis quite yet. But I am sure I will learn in time.

I did learn that a wiki seems like a much simpler way of communicating with hordes of people when compared to e-mail. I also learned that the information on wikis can be edited by anyone who happens to view the page and who wants to add comments or new information. I didn't know that you could essentially make your own "wikipedia". I knew that people could change information on Wikipedia, but I never had thought that I could do so with my own wiki.

I was suprised at how fast and easy it was to create my own wiki page. I thought for sure I had done something wrong because it was so fast and simple.

I don't really know what my feelings on wikis are, seeing as I haven't really played with it and used it. However, I do like Wikipedia. Hopefully it will be something new and fun to learn about and use.

Mashed Up!

So, I took the spiral staircase to the bead art section at http://bighugelabs.com/, and this is what happened....

Radical.

Spiral Staircase

I found this photostream on Flickr too. I thought it was cool because the library has a spiral staircase. This is the Carl A. Pescosolido Library at the Govenor's Academy in Massachusetts. I couldn't figure out how to get the slide show into a blog post, so the picture is linked.

The Reading Tent

When I saw this picture, I instantly fell in love with it! What a cute idea to have a reading tent in a library!

I think this is perfect for elementary school libraries. If there had been a reading tent in my elementary school, I would have wanted to go there and read all the time. It would be a good way to entice kids to come to the library in the first place, to show that it is a fun learning environment. A reading tent could even be used as an incentive for good behavior.

Love it!!

This picture was taken by KYD Advisor at Crofton Downs Primary School in New Zealand.