Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? Wikis and Blogs

Posted in blogz | Monday, February 9th, 2009 | 4 Comments » Trackback
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Walt Crawford’s new version of Cites & Insights contains the freestanding article version (pdf) of the talk he gave at the OLA Superconference that I thought was so useful. Lots of good charts and graphs and stats about the world of library blogs and library bloggers. Interesting reading no matter what your familiarity is with either of these tools.

Blogs and wikis aren’t shiny new toys for libraries and librarians any more. They’ve moved from toys to tools. As with most tools, they’re not magic, they’re not right for everything or everybody, but they can be powerfully effective in many situations.

4 Responses to “Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? Wikis and Blogs”

  1. walt crawford Says:
    February 10th, 2009 at 11:18

    Thanks for the mention. The session was a pleasure to do (as was OLA to attend). If I was doing something similar, it would be tempting to drop the whole stats section and focus on advice for sensible blogging…maybe enhanced with some success stories.

  2. iLibrarian » Blogs & Wikis - Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? Says:
    February 10th, 2009 at 12:38

    [...] via Librarian.net [...]

  3. Ian Hunter Says:
    February 17th, 2009 at 1:12

    I recently started my own blog (www.libraryboardmatters.ca), and many of my first posts are my reports from OLA SuperConference in Toronto. One of the articles, which I titled “SC 1320, Intro to Library Blogs and Wikis” (published Feb. 7), talks about Mr. Crawford’s session. I enjoyed his session. I hope he comes back to SuperConference next year.

  4. Erin Kearns Says:
    February 22nd, 2009 at 1:58

    Thanks for the article. I am going to be starting a blog for my high school media center … the things to think about (content management, purpose, followthrough, and starting small) ideas were especially helpful.