A couple of posts about sandboxes have caught my eye:
- LISNews posted about Peter Morville (writer of Ambient Findability, which if you haven’t read – you should) and his Flickr “sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns.”
- Roy Tennant writes about the benefits of libraries having a sandbox to try out new software and technology, in particular he points out the University of Cincinnati’s sandbox.
I have, in a somewhat disorganized manner, been creating and working with sandboxes for several years. Libology is, at least in its first phase, my effort to make a structured sandbox for my own efforts, with an eye towards demonstrating how various tools can work for libraries. These have been scattered throughout several other domains, and one of my first tasks will be to combine what I have done so far under one domain.
Web hosting is inexpensive. A site that can run blogs, discussion lists, wikis, CMSs, and a great many other helpful tools can be had for about $5 per month. An individual or group, taking things one step at a time, can learn a lot from simply getting a site and setting up various software. There is no better way, in my opinion, to learn about open source and web 2.0 than to jump in the sandbox and start playing!
