Did you know that you can use Wikipedia to direct web traffic to you? Long over are the days of information hoarding, and putting information on Wikipedia about your local and unique collections is one more way to disseminate!!

 This is especially helpful for your locally oriented special collection, or books that you have about your local hsitory... and not just for scholarly or academic libraries with a lot of unique resources. Let's say you have a book that is about the history of a neighborhood in your city. You can go to Wikipedia, create an account, add content, put in a link to your library, and viola! 

There are pitfalls however, such as being labeled as a spammer. You can't really go into Wikipedia and just add links, that makes you a spammer.  

 The idea was written about by Ann Lally and Carolyn Dunford: 

The Idea
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/lally/05lally.html

They suggested that we put links to our NWDA finding aids online: 

NWDA
http://nwda.wsulibs.wsu.edu/

More than 50% of all Google searches lead to Wikipedia: 

Wikipedia Users
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/460/wikipedia

So we tried, and because we only put up links, and not content, we were spammers according to Wikipedia standards. If you add content - try creating a page about your library, your town, something important to your community, or something you get asked about a lot, and then add links! It works!! Read Lally and Dunford's article!

 Here is the wikipedia article for the Idaho State Historical Society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_State_Historical_Society

SPLAT rushed in to PNLA (in beautiful Post Falls, ID) this morning to do a presentation on "Creative Outreach".  6 of us - Amy, Anna, Memo, Ruth, Stephanie, and Tammy - talked about methods of creative outreach and different things we're doing in our libraries along that vein. Later today I'll post the links to what we each pointed to in our presentations - so keep an eye out if you're interested.

 If you're here at PNLA make sure you come by and see us at our comfy SPLAT couch conveniently located at the end of vendor row by the water, stairs, and doors to the beautiful outdoors.

I am so excited to discover a new search engine that actually might be better than Google. Shocking I know but see for yourself. My coworker Max showed this site to me today and I was so impressed I had to blog about it. Cuil is actually an old Celtic word for knowledge and the site was created by a former Google engineer. I love the dynamic layout of the search results.

Visit Cuil.com here: http://www.cuil.com/

Learn more about the site here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil

One of my Facebook Friends is Jim Milles of the SUNY Buffalo law school. This week, he's attending a conference on computer-assisted legal instruction. Jim is using Twitter during the conference sessions, so I'm receiving a steady stream of interesting observations and ideas.

Here's an example:

"#calicon08: FSU survey: 82% of students use Facebook at least once a week: only 8% had used Second Life at all."

It's really great for me to have Jim "gleaning" for me. Yay, Twitter! Go, Jim!

Let's have a look at this little nugget.

I assume he's talking about law students at Florida State University. So, the survey subjects are mostly in their early- to mid-twenties, and they fall into a small slice of the population of the "real world." But, Florida State's law librarians now have some important data that will help them decide where to locate their online presence.

Remember how fast IM melted away when teens started texting instead? Has anyone in Idaho done a quick-and-dirty--or elegant--survey recently? If you have, please share!

I'm already sitting here trying to figure out how to get a quick survey incorporated into this year's UI law school orientation week ...

I just learned that there are at least two academic libraries that have set up their library guides and catalog search engines as Facebook apps. One of them is a Voyager library--UCLA. The other library uses Innovative Interfaces--Ryerson University.

It makes sense for libraries to be out there in the parts of cyberspace where our students spend their time. And it's not hard to do, technically. But, will anyone USE these apps? Stay tuned ...

See for yourself, at:

UCLA Library has a Voyager catalog search app in Facebook

http://apps.facebook.com/uclacatalog/

Ryerson University's library guide can be found at:
http://www.ryerson.ca/library/iii/facebook.html