Blogs and wikis

Today Bill Johnston and I gave a talk at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), an expanded version of the talk at Yeppoon. I realise now that I didn't actually blog my own talk there, so that's something I'll now do when I get home (next week) so that I can upload the PowerPoint (which I can't do from here). There was an audience mainly of librarians from institutions in Brisbane. The other speakers at this event were Chelsea Harper (Central Queensland University Library) and Kate Watson (University of the Sunshine Coast). They had received the Ray Choate Scholarship from ALIA which supported them in carrying out their research: Investigating blog and wiki technology for the enhancement of internal reference services practice.

They have done an online survey of a sample of public, university and special libraries in Australia, to find out whether they are using wikis and blogs and if so what they are using them for (e.g. internal procedures, reference services, marketing). The focus here is on library blogs, rather than personal librarian blogs. They haven't finished their research yet - they've got to finish analysing this data, then they are going to do some interviews to follow up, and carry out a pilot study at CQU. In the meantime they have created a wiki on Australian bloga and wikis, which is public, though a "work in progress". The address is: http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/libraryblogswikis/

Photo by Sheila Webber: Brisbane CBD viewed from the water, July 2006.