I’m moderating Track A: Blogs, Wikis and Collaboration Tools at Internet Librarian International. The first panel is on Digital Tools for Collaboration. Michael Stephens, of Tame the Web and the St. Joseph County Public Library, is introducing collaborative tools such as Podcasting (he’s showing actual libraries’ use of podcasting as marketing tools, publishing book reviews, etc.), User-created Content (may be more important than podcasts), messaging (IM, VoIP, Skype, virtual reference replacement), and Wikis (Welcome to Web 2.0 and the age of collaboration). It’s the Read/Write Web. He’s showing his own test wiki for ILI2005 and the prototype for the internal wiki at his library. He also mentioned that the Flickr tag for this conference is ili2005.

Aaron Schmidt of the WalkingPaper blog and the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, is talking about why we are collaborating and with whom. Think about collaborating with library patrons rather than serving them. Look at Ann Arbor District Library web site and how it’s created a virtual community for teenagers.

Brian Kelly of UKOLN encouraged the audience to use mobile phones to blog, IM, Flickr, and other collaboration. What don’t we need? E-mail. We should kill email. He prefers RSS, IM, sound & video, blogs, wikis, podcasting. Reluctance is due to tradition, trust, and immaturity of technologies. Are these “toys for boys”? Are there gender issues? Strategies for change: copyright issues, alternative business modesl. Does accessibility and widening participation trump copyright? Use wiki for note-taking. published podcasts prior to event. Use SMIL presentation as a backup. Saves time and travel costs. Blogging for librarians. What happens if you give librarians voice? Soon it will be wierd that you don’t provide blogging. Warwick University is ahead of the game.

Email can still be useful. It doesn’t have to die.