A little Voodoo(6)

Here is the website I designed for my LIS753 class.
Voodoo Museum

Wikis! (5)

After doing a group project on wikis, and creating a wiki for our project-- I find myself thinking, wikis are pretty cool!

Wikis are collaborative, interactive, exciting, and a lot of fun.
I think wikis are the perfect tool for libraries, and an excellent way to organize staff resources, develop new ides, reach patrons, provide subject lists, bibliographies, organizes web sources, and really, the list is endless for the many uses of wikis.

The best thing about wikis, is that anyone can use them. They are easy to figure out, and simple to participate in.

Though there are potentials for misuse of wikis....Colbert and Wikipedia...there are always many security options when setting up your own wiki where you can determine who is able to contribute.

A great thing too, is that even though information is constantly being changed, there is always a history kept of the changes. No information is ever lost, so it is an excellent and simple way to keep an archive of the changes without having to worry or think about it.

Wikis are exciting! Wikis are the future! I hope more libraries and archives will start taking advantage of the many amazing uses of wikis!

Attack of the Digital Monsters!! (4)

So the more I am learning about all of the excellent parts of the Internet that make up Web 2.0 (wikis, blogs, rss, podcasts, etc...etc...etc...), the more I realize we also need to be learning about the preservation, and protection of our valuable tools and content! Recently when I lost not only my Internet connection, but also my laptop, I experienced a panic not unlike and addict unable to get their "fix". The 5 days without a connection to the world (or my schoolwork!) left me wondering also about the rest of Web 2.0 and what is getting lost? What is anyone doing to preserve this digital world? What if someone pulled the big Internet plug, where would we all be?

Well, here are some answers, fear not!

There are many organizations out there working on preserving content for future generations and for preservation of the collective memory of our 2.0 generation.
The Library of Congress is one of them with their Digital Preservation Program out to protect digital content for future generations. A feat fit for superheroes, but it makes me feel safer knowing they are out there.

Internationally, there is the International Internet Preservation Consortium which takes on the extreme challenge of preserving the Internet content of the World!

One thing every 2.0 library should have is a Computer Contingency Plan or a Computer Disaster Plan!

With so many threats to digital access, digital preservation, and natural disaster threats (which seem unfortunately prevalent lately) the librarian 2.0 needs to be aware of the threats and know how to plan, prevent, and manage the variables that prey on the digital world.

Before libraries and archives jump onto the digital mega trend, they need to think about how to protect their information and ensure that access will be consistent, and protected from all disasters. Librarians are the superheroes of the world- taking on villains threatening access daily! They must not overlook defending the realm of the web where much of their digital information might be threatened and lost right before their eyes!