you're so fine you blow my mind

After stalling a bit here over the Library 2.0 assignment (which I suspect occurred because of the "too many options! too much to say!" conundrum that I have already mentioned) this lazy Sunday will find me - hopefully - working through a bit of my backlog. The fact that my cold returned just before thanksgiving and has been persistently lingering since then, thus rendering me totally homebound should help. Don't worry though. I'll take little breaks so the verbosity doesn't hit you all at once.

First off, then: Wikipedia. For which I am full of love. I have to say, reading some of the posts that my fellow participants have made on the subject has warmed the heart a bit. So much affection on display. I'm afraid that librarians, to make a sweeping generalization which I'm never keen on but is sometimes inevitable, have feared it for too long. Or at the very least, feared claiming it as their own. For ages, none of us professionals would admit to using Wikipedia. And then, when a few brave souls would raise their hand, they were certain to tag on: "of course, I always verify the information in another source." You know, just like we learned to do in library school. All well and good, but ...

I am here to admit to you that I use Wikipedia all the time. I love it. And, frequently, I do not verify the information I get there in another source. I do click on links galore - both to other Wikipedia articles, as well as to the bibliographies that are often included. Further, I don't think that confessing this makes me a bad librarian, although I'm sure that there are those who may want to scold me right now.

The caveat: most of my Wikipedia use is limited to my personal use and when answering reference questions and the like, it isn't my first stop. But I do use it at the library, especially when traditional sources don't cover the topic - either extensively or at all. One of the best things about the people's encyclopedia is how expansive it is and topics - especially people and places - that don't garner their own inclusion in a traditional encyclopedia are represented. Every youth librarian in the system has encountered - or will encounter, if they're still new - the infamous Queens Neighborhood assignment. And when they do, my hard-worn advice is to snuggle on up to Wikipedia. Those obscure mathematicians and inventors assignments too.

We all know that there just isn't a book on everything that people are interested in out there. The realities of the market just don't make it possible. But, there are lots of people who are interested in really obscure things and many of them are interested enough to create Wikipedia entries about their beloved topic. So why not use that to your advantage?

A final point I want to address on the topic is why one might prefer to use Wikipedia for a topic that might very well be covered in, say, World Book or a host of Gale databases. (And, for the record, I do use both of those things. A lot, actually and I constantly try to push them on my patrons as well, so maybe that fact that will redeem those to whom I lost points from above. Although I could be lying and just trying to get back into your good graces.) (Also, did you know that World Book was owned by the holding company that also owns Fruit of the Loom, Benjamin Moore and Dairy Queen? I didn't; thanks Wikipedia!) It's simply a matter of ease of use.

Even if you hate Wikipedia with a searing white hate that keeps you up at night, you have to give them props for this. The proprietary databases are a pain, especially if you happen to be using them from home and don't have your library card handy and aren't a librarian who happens to know exactly how to construct your search terms. And once you get in, there aren't embedded links that take you to other, related topics that you might find helpful to know about. So maybe, if you're really hardcore, you might go ahead and construct another search for said related topic. Only, oops, your session has timed out, so now you have to log on again and the server is slow so that takes a while and then you have to choose your database and aye, caramba this is giving me a headache so I'm just going to go use Wikipedia.

comparison shopping, news style

Speaking generally, finding new sources for information isn't really a problem for me. On the contrary, my challenge comes from deciding which of the myriad of options I should actually pay attention to. Usually, the process is pretty organic. I have the sites and the sources that I like. Sometimes they link to others, so maybe I will like that one too ...

Very rarely, then, do I avail myself to things like news feeders or searches. And when I do, it tends to be Google News. These other utilities get a lot of buzz though, and I admit that I like to know what people are buzzing about, so it was swell to do a bit of exploring.

Now then, I was planning to write my usual expansive response here, but I'm on the edge of getting a cold, so my headspace is a little trippy. As such, I will offer only scant impressions. Sort of the way we are supposed to, only usually I like typing to much to do so (I've always had a problem with self-editing my writing. I was critiqued for it in front of the class in elementary school, so you know it's true. And my sharing that fact with you now, even at a moment when I say I'm not going to write very much right now is an excellent example.)

So, Technorati seems to be popular, but I find it overwhelming. Probably not for me. As short as my attention span frequently is, you still go too fast for me. Also, your search results seems hit-or-miss and not quite as intuitive as I like.

Syndic8 only appeals to the part of me that wants to pretend that it's still the early-90s and I've just started using this new-fangled Internet thing. (Um, hey - why aren't I using Mosaic to look at this page?) And that part of me is very, very, very tiny. Practically non-existent, even. Also, when I did searches I got zero results on topics that the other places were finding hundreds.

I do like both Feedster and Topix. I worry that I only like Feedster because it is so pretty (so green! so mod!) , but I'm also very keen on the podcast search. And, even when I searched for semi-obscure topics, I found timely, interesting blog results. Which I may have found on other searches too, but not before mining a lot of inapplicable links. Topix just seems to have a lot of good qualities overall. It's well-designed, pulling and mimicking aspects of both print and new media. It's easy and intuitive to use and the presentation is clean. Of all of them, it's probably the one that I will actually use the next time I want to do a little information scavenging. Which, knowing me, will probably be within the next hour. After I have taken some more vitamin C.