Harnessing the Hive

One thing I haven't reported on yet is the RUSA MARS panel presentation on social networks and libraries with Matthew DeJune from Purdue, Tim Spauldling, founder of Library Thing, and Meredith Farkas, "Queen of Wikis". I was particularly interested in this session because Meredith will be presenting at our annual MSLA conference in November and I wanted to see her in action. She is an engaging presenter and her part of the presentation was well-organized, with a good PowerPoint to go along with it. She gave an overview of how public and academic libraries are using social networking tools, particularly wikis, and also spoke about something many of us probably haven't even considered - the issue of Knowledge Management - suggesting some ways we might think about using wikis to maintain institutional memory. I can see many applications for school libraries in the examples she showed and hope that her presentation in Massachusetts will inspire some of our K-12 librarians to delve into Library 2.0 tools. Meredith maintains Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki and blogs at Information Wants to Be Free. She also writes a monthly column for American Libraries on information technology. It was a pleasure meeting her in the Exhibit Hall at the Information Today booth and having her sign my copy of her hot-off-the-press book, Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online.