Today is Blog Day, ostensibly because the date sort of looks like the word blog (3108) if you squint or perhaps are a really creative-minded person. It’s a day where lots of bloggers will will highlight five blogs that they think we should know about. I was thinking of highlighting some of the new blogs …
This is why. You’ve got to check out the actual ad; it had me half laughing half furious. I don’t write much about politics on this blog, but I have to admit that this has gotten me kind of riled up. Vermont just isn’t the sort of place where people have really vile, manipulative, negative …
There’s been a whole lot of hubbub about those crazy articles on Forbes.com about wives being compared to whores and the appeal to Forbes’ male readers to not marry a career woman. Honestly, how they allowed this insecure misogynist to publish this garbage, much less to become an editor at their magazine, is beyond me. …
Remember way back when I was talking about wanting to do some sort of a free online educational extravaganza? Well, the wheels have been turning behind the scenes, but I didn’t want to announce anything until I had something concrete. This summer, I asked five other amazing women to partner with me in creating Five …
While we’re on the subject of wikis, here are some wiki-related links I’ve found recently that I thought you might want to know about: LIS753wiki – Even though they got my name wrong (grrrr…) [update: thanks for fixing it, Laura], the students who developed this class project in Michael Stephens’ GSLIS class created a very …
Karen Coombs beat me to the punch with an excellent post on a Web4Lib comment I had noticed recently as well: “I am repeatedly impressed by how often, when librarians consider wikis, their first thought seems to be of access control. The idea of “just anybody being able to edit our Web pages” seems somehow …
I must apologize for not writing much lately. I really believed that when I finished my book I would have lots and lots of spare time, but then the speaking engagements came rolling in and the professors in the graduate programs at Norwich suddenly “got religion” regarding information literacy. All good things, but they take …
I got an interesting question from a reader that I really wanted to open up to the community on my blog rather than pretending that I’m knowledgeable enough to answer this question by myself: I have been reading your blog and since you have expertise with wikis I am seeking your advice. I am applying …
Brion Vibber is the CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation. OMG, there is a serious lack of women in this room! This talk was about improvements in the pipeline for MediaWiki, so I didn’t want to miss it since most of my wikis are MediaWiki wikis. User accounts: The problem is that there are too many …
Our talk today went really well! Considering who we were up against (Yochai Benkler!!!), I was surprised and pleased that we had a pretty decent crowd at the talk. Update: Audio from our talk can be found here in the Wikimania archives. I had no idea we were being recorded. I was so thrilled to …
Can I tell you how nice it is to have free wireless EVERYWHERE at this conference? Not only that, but the seats are comfortable, and the desks or armrests have power adapters in them. Every conference should be at Harvard Law School. 😉 Seriously, if you want bloggers to cover your conference, make it as …
Considering that I have initiated many MediaWiki projects of my own, I was very excited about hearing from other folks who have experienced the highs and lows of running a wiki. Transitioning to a Wiki: The wikiHow Experience Jack Herrick is the owner of wikiHow. Their mission is to “provide useful instructions ot help people …
Sins of omission? An exploratory evaluation of Wikipedia’s topical coverage Alex Halavais & Derek Lackaff Looking at authority/authoritativeness of wikipedia articles. Accuracy is obviously an issue, but authority is more than that. It’s also about breadth, timeliness, etc. Encyclopedias are thought of as being authoritative, but what about the Wikipedia. Halavais and Lackaff took three …
Our Movement: Past, Present, Future Jimmy first showed the “Wikiality” clip, which I highly recommend you check out for a laugh. Fundamental Mission statement: imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Milestones of 2006: More than 1 million articles in …
I haven’t been able to blog as much as I’d like to lately. Between trying to get a million things done at work before the students come back — wasn’t it just May yesterday? — getting ready for my talk this weekend at Wikimania, and actually enjoying summer in Vermont, I’ve been wicked busy. Since …
I Want you … to Drop DOPA! Originally uploaded by davidking. I haven’t written much about DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act), though I certainly made my opinions about social networking software clear in my megapost on the subject. I was appalled, but not surprised, by the overwhelming support and passage of the bill in the …
The other day, I got an e-mail from a reader of my blog: “You mentioned in one of your more recent posts that you’ve learned what works and what doesn’t in “selling” information literacy to faculty. Could you elaborate? I suspect that I will have to be doing a lot of that in the near …
For those of you who missed my wiki talk last week and wanted to watch it later, the archived presentation is up and is available as a podcast or as a video with the slides and audio. There are a lot of terrific presentations in the SirsiDynix Institute archive by some of the great thinkers …
I’m on vacation in Florida this week and have happily been away for the computer for long periods of time, so I was very surprised to find all of the comments on what I had written a few days ago on skills for the 21st century librarian. I guess it really touched a chord (it’s …
A few weeks ago, I finished a chapter I was writing (not for my book — another one) on the topic of technology in LIS Education. I think Rachel asked me to write it because I had complained about my own library school education in the past and the fact that many schools create this …