The wisdom of crowds

Can you name any of these characters?
If you think you know who they are -
add a tag as a comment ...
perhaps the collective wisdom of the Learning 2.0 group will prove Surowiecki's thesis

Puzzled .........

I have been trying to post a video on the Rum Rebellion featuring our own Paul Brunton. The short can be found on the Sydney Morning Herald's multimedia pages at http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/2008/rumrebellion/main.html
Perhaps theauthor can help me!!

Picture Australia's OurTown

I have added some images to Picture Australia's Ourtown group. The National Library checks the group regularly, acquiring some images for its Pictures collection. According to PA's Flickr Report by April 2008 there were 2,031 images in Ourtown. I have assigned Creative Commons licenses and tagged the five images taken around Chifley Square in Sydney with slnsw2008.
The State Library of Victoria has a group photo pool on Flickr which aims to collate photos of the Library, its exhibitions and events.

Where the wild things are

In its Scootle database, the Le@rning Federation makes digital resources available for online curriculum content. The resources are sourced from Australia and New Zealand's premier cultural institutions including the National Library (such as invitation here). We need to be there too! see
www.scootle.edu.au

Use of wikis & blogs for subject guides

Meredith Farkas, in her May 2007 American Libraries article, points out that wikis can make "a subject guide easier to update, searchable, and collaborative” (Farkas 2007, p. 33). Here is an Early Childhood Education Subject Guide Built Using a Wiki: http://www.lib.fsu.edu/wiki/index.php/Early_Childhood_Education

Other libraries have used blogs to create and maintain subject guides. Plymouth State University in New Hampshire is using Scriblio, which is a customized version of the WordPress blogging software for their subject guides as well as their library OPAC. Here is an example of their Graphic Design Subject Guide Built using Scriblio: http://library.plymouth.edu/by-subject/graphic-design

Wikis

I have had a little play with wikis through my involvement with NSLA's Information Access Plan. I posted a paper on rights management by Jennie Berryman here https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/NSLAIAP/Rights+Management+Discussion+Paper
and some information about authentication on the wiki hosted by the NLA. It is probably a good way to work collaboratively but I must admit I did find it intimidating contributing & commenting in such a public space. I think others must feel the same way because there has been very little activity since the workshop.

Flickr

I see on Lorcan's weblog the Powerhouse Museum is contributing 50 images a week to Flickr. It has joined the Library of Congress in the Commons on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/commons As Lorcan points out this is all about aggregating supply and demand and also combining audience & professional metadata. Seb Chan at the Museum comments "tonnes of tags have been added and they have been of a quality we have nor experienced in our other tagging projects" .There were some interesting interactions with users including a discussion about an image of a long demolished pub in the Rocks in Yahoo Answers.

Searching State Library of NSW on Flickr I found 241 hits including some false drops - photos of ceramic pots by clayglazepots. I couldn't see the phrase in the tags so the words must have been scattered thru the artist's extensive biog. Repeating the search as a phrase using inverted commas improved the results producing 119 hits.