Wikis and Googledocs

Here's the biggest open secret in the reference world: Reference librarians use Wikipedia. Whenever I'm trying to help my daughters with a paper on some subject I'm not familiar with, I end up on Wikipedia and they say, "Mom, we CAN'T use Wikipedia!" Of course, they can't--their teachers tell them expressly NOT to.

But, here's the thing. If you're at the reference desk and a patron asks a question about something of which you have only a passing knowledge, you will almost certainly google a keyword, then navigate to the Wikipedia reference that will surely appear on your first page of results. Say you don't even have a passing knowledge about what the patron is asking you, but it seems like THEY know what they're talking about, again it's Google and Wikipedia. True, it's not the most reliable source, but it is one way to get a feel for which direction to go to find more information on a subject.

Google Docs is pretty neat. We in the Social Committee just used it recently as a different method of communicating with everyone in the committee. It keeps all the information in one place. I can see where this would be a useful tool for business purposes or even for a busy family to keep track of schedules.

Facebook Fun

I've been on Facebook for awhile and it's pretty neat. I have connected with many people from my past, mostly in a good way. The way is works is, from the information you input, Facebook finds other people in their network with the same information (school you attended, place of employment, hometown, etc.) and those people are suggested to you as possible friends. You man choose to add them as a friend or not. Also, you may search for people by name or email and send them a message asking them to 'friend' you. They can confirm or ignore your request.

I wasn't sure if reconnecting in this way would be my cup of tea. But alas! Just recently, through Facebook, I've received some friend requests from people I used to work with in my pre-library life and it's been a lot of fun communicating with them and seeing what they're up to. Most have left the Chicago area but through our chats on Facebook it's almost like being in the same space.

All that said, here's my two cents on Facebook. Don't put too much information out there. I have deleted some of the personal information that I originally posted after I thought the better of it. And if you have personal comments to somebody that you don't necessarily want blasted all over the internet, send them a private message instead of commenting to their wall. That way, only they can read it. Not everyone wants the whole world to be all up in their biznass.