Your Treasures at the State Library of Victoria

While on this idea of soliciting contributions from the users, I like the blog 'Your Treasures' in the State Library of Victoria website. Users contribute heritage treasure they have and other users are asked to contribute who might have the some information relating to the posted treasure. The Library also attach link(s) which bring users' attention to items held in the collection which relate to this treasure.

The Hyperlinked Library

Just had a riveting tea break with a Colleague who attended this Seminar at Macquarie University yesterday. For those who are interested to follow this up, the seminar was conducted by Michael Stephens. His blog can be accessed at: http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2005/11/do-libraries-matter-on-library-librarian-20.html

Through the sharing of information, another Colleague made a suggestion about collection of poster images around NSW soliciting locals to contribute the digital images and load them into Flickr. This contributes to our Ephemera collection. A prize event can also be organised where a good image can be rewarded, and maybe the awarded image can be used as a starting point for a creative writing exercise (poetry, short stories)-- again, drawing on the local creative communities to participate and sharing while enriching the cultural life of NSW. We can get some sponsors for these activities as we do for the @Mitchell projects.

wk8 Answer boards and social searching

We can do Australian lexicons with Sydney origin, questions and answers pertaining to history of Sydney, its people, culture, intellectual life-- embedding delicious tags of public libraries' local history section throughout the state of NSW, as well as State Library's collection. This adds another dimension to the Telephone Enquiry Service.

wk7 LibraryThing

It's like a giant book club that is able to involve authors, publishers, bibliographic records from Libraries and Readers around the world. If used for State Library's website, it allows extensive sharing: authors' promotions of their work (eg. talks they give at State Library's Events can be YouTubed), reviews can be posted, readers can share their views and provide recommendations of other publications of similar field; links to the catalogue records allows physical access to the books, or, referrals to other libraries. This set up can also incorporate special events organised by the Library, such as the Miles Franklin award. How about a section on what staff members of the Library are reading at the moment... Oh, and not forgetting the 'legal deposit' publications. We should have a space for them too.

This site reminds me the pleasure of reading fiction... I think it is in Publishers' interest to promote this tool.

wk7 Del.icio.us tag cloud and Sutherland Shire Libraries

It's a bookmarking system that sets up see references which take the users to the information they want to access. I was impressed with the tag cloud of Sutherland Shire Libraries in that the users are able to access Libraries' holdings while browsing the tag cloud. The collections are also listed on the same listing as other urls the Library has bookmarked as reference tools (eg. institutions' urls such as Art Gallery of NSW, etc.). This means the users don't have to leave delicious and go to the Library's database to access the information. The tags are grouped by subject categories: any urls and Library's holdings of similar subject category are grouped under the one tag.

wk6 Video online; Youtube and Google video

wk5 Explore Wikipedia and wikis

Wiki works like a curator would for an exhibition; or like what a web content researcher would do for our website on different topic of interest for the collection. It organises information into certain topic of interest by drawing on the connections of different aspects of that specific topic and provides access to users. I can envisage the different teams in the Reading Room setting up their own wiki on the topic of their specialisation to provide access to 'pre-packaged' information.
It also seems to allow user discussions, so users can contribute too in the packaging of information for the benefit of other users. It is not just a one way thing.

Imagine doing approval plan acquisitions using wiki set up by vendors. I wonder if this will help the fine tuning of our subjects profile? The tuning process will be more organic and more immediate (?).