1. Blogs--Web pages typically arranged as journal entries in reverse chronological order. May or may not allow comments by readers.
2. Wikis--Infinitely editable web sites, sometimes by anyone with a Web connection and sometimes by restricted communities of users. Wikipedia is the most famous wiki of all; the UCSF Library uses Confluence--an "enterprise wiki"--to manage internal processes and documentation.
3. Podcasts--Audio files that people can subscribe to using services such as ITunes.
4. Social bookmarks--Exemplified by sites such as del.icio.us or flickr, which allow users to apply their own labels to written documents or to photos. As multiple users apply the same tags to different resources, those resources cluster together. The formal term for this phenomenon is "folksonomy."
5. Second Life--A "3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents." People select avatars, alternate personalities that represent themselves in Second Life.
Several projects at the UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management already employ sophisticated communication technologies. These successes could be built upon to enhance informatics education and information services at UCSF.
