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.

Looking north

Looking north is the Library's new Discover atmitchell Collections site
There must be heaps of material [photos and docs] out there that people would love to contribute in a wiki type interactive collection. e.g. this photo of the corner shop in Greenwich Rd circa 1920’s.

When all the baby boomers retire and go online and start their family histories and dig through those old boxes of photos and ephemera – there will be a huge untapped reservoir of free and enthusiastic labour to help Mitchell Library build such sites.

Some news from George Bush about his memoirs, Library & microfish

Lake Wendouree

We travelled to Ballarat recently for a wonderful wedding. The drought has been severe in Victoria turning Lake Wendouree into a football oval. Prospectors with metal detectors have found coins, guns, knives and all manner of things on the Lake bed.
The State Library of Victoria opened a new storage facility at Ballarat in 2006. More than 100,000 newspapers; 25,000 boxes of manuscripts; 750,000 serial volumes were moved into the store on the campus of the University of Ballarat.

I should have a look at my friend Michael's blog for inspiration - Mike learned to love blogging in 2007 by doing a blog for his friend, Olive Riley. At 108, Olive is the oldest blogger in the world. www.allaboutolive.com.au The Library has archived Olive's blog in PANDORA
Mike's blog about family art stories is at http://familyartstoriesrubbo.wordpress.com/

Have just started reading The secret agent by Joseph Conrad first published in 1907. It is available electronically at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/974 but I am reading the Library's copy at N823.912/47
It is now midnight and probably too late to read on .........