Catching up on reading, and reposting it here

Nicole Engard on Brewster (Internet Archive) Kahle’s speech at Code4Lib.

Kyle at TameTheWeb on putting virtual reference in the user’s pocket (via cellphone): also a guest post by a librarian, Joe Murphy, who has done just that. I’m still not convinced of the value of 160-character reference transactions, but for short simple questions there’s clearly a role for SMS (me, I need more than 160 characters just to say hello).

Dorothea Salo on (among other things) why writing works better for her onscreen.

Connie Crosby on whether wikis belong in law firms.

Freakonomics on whether social networking is good for society. There’s an interesting suggestion that people might form more homogeneous friendships if they form them online, “cut[ting] themselves off from serendipitous encounters with those who are superficially different from them, ethnically, socio-economically, and even in terms of musical taste.” If anything, I’ve found the opposite: I’ve met people online who I could not (or would not) have become friends with in real life.

Infonatives on ten brainless things an online academic library can do.

Chris Wilson at Slate points out that most edits on social-media sites are actually performed by a small percentage of users. Yep. While it’s true that a large percentage of those who go online have participated in the read/write web, most of them haven’t done so to any large degree, in spite of the rhetoric.