Wikis for training materials and conference organising

Sarah Washford (Info Junkie) describes in Wiki Wonders how she used a wiki as a tool to collaborate on the training material and programme for their new Library Management System, and how they are now using it to help organise a conference.

Wikis for compiling subject guides

In We have wiki! Meredith Farkas, Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University US, describes how she used Mediawiki to set up library research guides.

Google docs and the future of document management

This is an interesting posting from James Lappin on the TFPL blog. Google docs and the future of document management discusses how Google docs may affect the way organisations collaborate on documents in the future, and gives two examples of how it is currently being used:

 “a charity where staff in the marketing department use Google docs to create and store their documents because it allows them to collaborate on documents with people from other parts of the charity (whereas their shared drive is restricted to departmental silos)”

And

“a bank with a very strong compliance and information security regime, where some colleagues were using Google Docs to create and store business documents in order that they could work on documents at home (corporate systems were extremely slow to access remotely, and banned the sending of word documents as attachments to a web based e-mail address)”.

Wikisurgery

Wikisurgery is a free surgical encyclopaedia for surgeons and their patients. It has been set-up by Surgical Associates Ltd, owners of the International Journal of Surgery. Contributions in the form of new articles and editing can be made by anyone at anytime anywhere in the world. The site is totally upfront about the possibility of vandalism, and in the ‘About Wikisurgery’ section it says:

“older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed (see Wikisurgery:Researching with Wikisurgery for more details).”

There is an interesting Basic Surgical Skills Program. Authored by Michael Edwards, the program begins by checking the trainee’s aptitude for surgical handicraft, learning ability profile, suitability for surgery, attitude and preparedness. It then provides 15 surgical sections, progressing through putting on gloves, swabbing, using suckers, retracting, and using haemostats, to excising a mole from simulated skin and suturing the wound. The program starts at http://wikisurgery.com/index.php?title=PrimeSkills_in_Surgery.

If, like me, you have lesser ambitions, take a look at
http://wikisurgery.com/index.php?title=Scissors_07_How_to_cut_with_scissor . Forget about ‘how to cut’, how to hold scissors was a real eye-opener for me. I have now tried the techniques suggested and found that I have lot more control over the scissors when tackling our very fluffy, long-haired cat’s matted fur!

Twitter for Museum 2.0

Nina Simon has posted an interesting article in her Museum 2.0 blog on the nature of Twitter and how it can be used by museums. It was posted in April 2006, but I have only just picked it up via a comment to a posting made by Brian Kelly about Twitter (Will Twitter be Big in 2008?). Shelly Bernstein, from Brooklyn Museum and who made the comment, has also posted a “case study” of her own organization’s test run of the technology.

Review of legal blogs

Charon QC has posted an extensive review of legal blogs, or blawgs, in Blawg Review # 141. Good coverage of UK blawgs in particular. Thanks to Lo-fi Librarian for the tip-off on this gem.

Using a wiki for a Lab Open Notebook

The Useful Chemistry Blog has reported on the Rosania Lab Open Notebook Science Wiki.  1CellPK  is the new home of the Subcellular Drug Transport Laboratory at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Michigan College of Pharmacy.

To quote from their wiki home page:

“Open Notebook Science is ideally suited for community-wide collaborative research projects involving mathematical modeling and computer simulation work, as it allows researchers to document model development in a step-by-step fashion, then link model prediction to experiments that test the model, and in turn, use feedback from experiments to evolve the model. By making our laboratory notebooks public, the evolutionary process of a model can be followed in its totality by the interested reader. Researchers from laboratories around the world can now follow the progress of our research day-to-day, borrow models at various stages of development, comment or advice on model developments, discuss experiments, ask questions, provide feedback, or otherwise contribute to the progress of science in any manner possible.”

Phil Bradley’s 30 Web 2.0 applications

Phil Bradley has loaded his 30 Web 2.0 applications presentation on authorSTREAM. The applications that he has chosen for his Top 30 are worth investigating if you are not already aware of them, and so is authorSTREAM itself. It is similar to Slideshare, in that it allows you to upload and share presentations, but you can also provide an accompanying commentary as Phil has in this case.

Library Pageflakes start pages

Two examples of Libraries using Pageflakes as a “start page”. (Thanks to Phil Bradley for highlighting both of these in his blog).

The first is Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive. It is not so much a start page as several start pages. I counted seven tabs so it is almost a mini web site! As a regular visitor to Dublin I love the traffic and travel tab where they have Dublin web cams, traffic updated and local travel news. A superb example of how far you can push this technology.

The second is Llyfrgell Ceredigion Library in Aberystwyth, Wales. Again, another good example of concentrating on providing local information.

YouTube – Google Privacy Channel

Google has created a Privacy Channel on YouTube (YouTube – Broadcast Yourself ) where it has 23 videos on how to protect your Privacy on some of the Google services and products. Whatever you think about Google’s attitude to privacy these are  viewing as they do provide useful tips and information on how to change your personal settings and protect your privacy. Thanks to Phil Bradley for the heads up on this one.