Using a Wiki
Ah, Web 2.0. Wikis could be a fun and integral part of libraries. Instead of bogging down the Circulation desk with mind-numbing questions, patrons can refer to the library wiki. The wiki could be a constantly evolving thing adapting to the newest and strangest questions. There could even be a "was this helpful" kind of survey that will use statistics to point patrons in the right direction after a few clicks.
Academic Social Tagging
In a thought social tagging for the world of academia could be something useful and very good. Although someone is definitely going to have to monitor the tags and amke sure people are tagging the right things with the right tags. I think the good outweighs the bad though, the tags will eventually create an ease of access and allow users to precisely find what they are looking for and like materials.
Wikipedia!!!!
The creation of Wikipedia will probably go down in history as one of the best and most influential creations of the 21st century. A lot of people try to discredit Wikipedia, but I mean it is what it is. It is a socially generated reference encyclopedia, there is a lot of garbage on there but there is a lot more useful material on Wikipedia. Even if someone uses Wikipedia as a reference and clicks one of the many links associated with a given page, doesn't Wikipedia serve it's purpose? Don't get me wrong, I love Wikipedia, scanning through the various pages and trying to link various things together is a great (drinking) game (think Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but only using Wikipedia articles). Wikipedia is a great tool, but like Uncle Ben said, with great power comes great responsibility.
Weblogs and You
Blogs and libraries are kind of in the same boat as social tagging and libraries. On one hand they could be a useful tool, but on the other hand it could get ugly. If librarians start to blog and open the forum up for comments there could be some interesting posts from user and/or staff. So it will have to be monitored very closely and every word is going to have to be carefully scrutinized so that nothing bad comes of a post. Some of the examples in the article about a mouse not working can be done through twitter or something shorter not necessarily a whole blog post, but I feel like I am just being nit-picky with that.
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I agree with you that social tagging can get ugly. I think this will let librarians will be more cautious about people’s posts. Also this will let libraries need to have staff that just checks users’ post which may cost libraries more.
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