Thing 18

Wikipedia's like Google, in that it's the dirty secret of all librarians. Like everyone else it's the first place we look, when we think no-one's looking. Hopefully we use it as a starting point, and check our references. My favourite story is that of the hapless Daily Mirror football reporter who came unstuck when he looked up AC Omonia. Nature found that Wikipedia and Britannica were of similar value in terms of the accuracy of science articles, which caused an almighty row.

What do I think? Well it's a reasonable place to find out the first thing about something you know nothing about, and fine for things that don't really matter; minor mysteries that were discussed in the tea room, for example. Having found peer reviewed journal articles and published textbooks with inaccurate citations, I would always check the original source before I cited it myself, and I'd never cite Wikipedia, people would laugh at me. Interesting that, isn't it? They wouldn't laugh if I cited Britannica.

Thing 17

I've been looking at wikis this week, wondering whether we can use Weblearn to store, comment on and edit documents for our web team. As part of thing 17 I clicked on the socialouls link and typed in my usual username and password on the offchance that I already had an account. Turns out I do. Turns out the web team already has a wiki there too. Might have to give that a closer look!

In order to prove I'd edited something, I searched for errors at socialouls. I guess everyone else got there first... I formatted some text that was in the wrong font on the blogs page and tried to separate two links that were joined by underlining. I failed in the latter, several times, for which the history gives me several lines of credit! Removing the link and putting it back in again would probably fix it, but it seemed unnecessary and tiresome.

Thing 16

I started a conversation, and retweeted a couple of posts about the exciting developments by #cern today. Can't tell you the result, since there's been no time for a reply and I have no followers to share my excitement with!

Thing 15

Set up librarykathryn on twitter, as opposed to own time Kathryn. Found a few people I know by searching for #ox23 and adding people who'd used the hashtag, then looking at who/what they were following. librarykathryn really has nothing to say. Own time Kathryn uses twitter occasionally to keep in touch with friends and stalk random celebrities who also, broadly speaking, have nothing to say. Why would a stranger care who Marcus Brigstocke is sitting next to on a train? Why do we do it? Voyeurism?

Thing 14

I'm already on LinkedIn. To begin with, when I was invited, I thought it was some dodgy spam, but the friend concerned confirmed that he had meant to send it, and so I signed up, out of politeness mostly. I rarely use it, all of the people I'm linked to are either colleagues at work or former colleagues. If any of them wanted to contact me it would be much easier for them to send me an email.

A schoolfriend once gave me his opinion that social networking requires a monopoly. I think he's got a point. LinkedIn might be useful if you're the sort of person who posts drunken photos on facebook that you wouldn't want a future employer to see. I think it wise to assume that everything on the internet is visible to everyone and will stay there forever.

Thing 13

I'm glad to see that thing 13 doesn't require setting up a facebook account, probably because it's the thing most of us have already done. Even my mother in law has one. In terms of library use, in the Bodleian Law Library we have used it mostly as an additional way to disseminate information. We also use twitter, a blog, instant messaging, rss and our webpage.

Perhaps we could interact better with our users; in terms of actual contact with individuals we operate mainly face-to-face and by email. It's really a question of time; rss and twitter feed into web pages and facebook without extra work, and allow our readers to choose to use the method of communication they're most comfortable with. I wonder how long it will be before library posts include social networking in the job description? Perhaps they already do!

Thing 12

Ah, YouTube. My Dad's very fond of it since they did a deal with the record companies and he can find his favourite music free of charge. I mostly watch clips posted by friends on facebook, either amusing time-passers or videos of grotty club gigs we attended in the 90s. I'm immortalised myself, in a video posted by a friend who thought it would be fun to spend an afternoon at the ice rink. I don't think I'm going to be troubling the winter olympics.

Thing 11

I've had a hiatus. No, that's not a medical condition. I've been keeping 23 things for that lull in activity during Friday afternoon desk duty, and suddenly I required headphones and couldn't see the readers appreciating my apparent lack of interest in their 'finding the red book I had last week' query. Actually, that was yesterday's query, but you get the idea.

I subscribed to a couple of BBC podcasts, but I could lose days listening to Punt and Dennis dismantling the week's news, so haven't dared play them. Podcast.com could do with a more effective search engine; I typed library uk into the box and got numerous hits including "The Worldwide Funk & Soul Music Show Funkopathe, Worldwide, Funk, Soul, Boogaloo, Lp, Vinyl, collection". I don't know what Funkopathe is; perhaps I should subscribe. I dread to think what would happen if I ticked the "Show Explicit Content" box.