Students' Favourite Web 2.0 Sites

Web 2.0 is a hot topic in librarianship and archival studies.  Students have posted their favorite examples of Web 2.0 tools and initiatives by libraries, archives, museums, and cultural or informational institutions.  Feel free to add to the list!

Broadly, Web 2.0 is defined as any web tool that promotes interaction between the user(s) and the website, as opposed to simply displaying information.  If you want to know more, check out Wikipedia's Web 2.0 article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2 (hmmm.... a Web 2.0 initiative which describes Web 2.0!)

My favourite is the DiMenna-Nyselius Library, with its "Meet the [Journal] Databases" mini-interviews in podcast form. Each database has a specific personality, like the business database ABI Inform, ABI Inform who has a Boston accent, no time, and a cell phone that keeps going off (he's the first on the list). Also, check out Academic Onefile, cademic Onef who is cast as a cook, and keeps speaking in cooking metaphors. “BAM!” Hehe. (Although I do not think "Bam", specifically, is a cooking metaphor.)

Not only is this super-fun for the listening students (I was rolling on the floor laughing), but it would be tonnes of fun for the reference staff to put together, as well. Fun and informative: this is so much better than reading database abstracts - although they have those, too.

Kaedra

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria ArtBase: Users can curate their own online gallery by choosing digitized images from the gallery's collection.  You can add annotations and arrange them any way you wish.  It's super easy and fun to do, and it's fascinating to see what other people have curated!

http://collection.aggv.bc.ca/mygallery/index.aspx

Sarah R.

eBird

"A real-time, online checklist program, eBird has revolutionized the way that the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. The observations of each participant join those of others in an international network of eBird users. eBird encourages users to participate by providing Internet tools that maintain their personal bird records and enable them to visualize data with interactive maps, graphs, and bar charts. All these features are available in English, Spanish, and French." Hosted by Cornell University.

That's just a snippet of this international, highly useful and really fun tool from amateurs to professional researchers in ornithology and environment.

There is also a Canadian version (though Canada is included in the North American version above) and a South American version is currently in beta.

~Christina S.

Library of Congress Flickr Page

I have a hard time putting into words how I feel about this project, but basically it makes me drool a little and swoon a lot.  I love photography, in particular I love old photos.  This project gives users a chance to add tags and notes to the photos and promotes accessibility through user interaction.  Some of the photos are completely AMAZING.  Most of them have no copyright, so they can be downloaded and used by you, me and everyone we know. *brie*

SOPAC

I’m a huge fan of incorporating Web 2.0 ideas into library catalogues.  One of the best examples I’ve seen of this is Ann Arbor District Library’s social OPAC (SOPAC), which integrates social software tools like tags, ratings, reviews, and comments right into the catalogue.  The result is something kind of like Amazon, with additional comments that will help patrons that are browsing for interesting items.  And you don’t even have to be a library patron to participate!  Another great aspect of SOPAC is that the source code is free to download from Blyberg.net, so any library can enhance their catalogue in a similar way.

-- Sarah P.

PonyFish

PonyFish isn't library-specific, but it can be very useful to bring a 2.0 feature -- RSS feeds -- to 1.0 web pages (including library pages). Or, you can use it to grab stuff from library pages (like new releases lists) to put into your favorite feed reader. PonyFish will make an RSS feed with its own URL from any web page with links on it. You can make any feed for free without joining up, but they will disappear if they're not accessed frequently. If you get a paid account, you can make more feeds and they won't disappear. Plus its name was inspired by the Crayon Ponyfish. Anyway, if you then use another of my favorite 2.0 tools ...

GoogleAjaxFeeds

... you can then turn around and incorporate feeds from any source, including PonFish feeds, into a web page of your own. This technology is what we're using at CHER to put feeds from CHER's own media releases and news stories about CHER research onto CHER's home page: http://www.cher.ubc.ca/. The CHER staff put links onto their media release and news web pages using Web 1.0 editing tools, and they are turned by PonyFish and GoogleAjaxFeeds into a live feed that updates the home page with constantly refreshed content. Go 2.0!

:) Jennifer D.

BibliOdyssey: A blog where the author tralws the Internet looking for fabulous materials digitized by special collections libraries, put on the Internet and then lost in the depths of Web.

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/

Book of the findings available also:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0955006163/bibliodyssey-20/

Helen