Introduction

Misled Youthís online Library will be different from your typical library, because all of us write the books. It will be an easily searchable collection of Omnibuses (online books created by members of Misled Youth, containing knowledge gained in Learning Groups and Collaborative Projects) Youíll be able to search for unique, youth-created knowledge by category, keyword, and creator. We plan to begin creating the infrastructure for the Library by early January. Please contact us if youíre interested in helping out, or post comments and suggestions here.

How To Contribute To The Library

There are three ways to contribute content to the Library:

1. contribute to a topic-based Omnibuses

2. collaborate on a learning group or project Omnibus

3. compile into a personal Omnibus

Your Omnibus doesnít have to be ìfinishedî to be contributed to the library. The fact that everything in the library is a work in progress shows that weíre always improving and expanding things. If you have a lot of well-organized information on a certain subject, it can stand on its own as an Omnibus under that topic. If you only have a little, you can contribute your article to an existing Omnibus. You can think of topic-based Omnibuses as loose leaf binders filled with many peopleís work.

This is different from an Omnibus created by a collaborative project or learning group, which is a more integrated, artistic compilation of that groupís knowledge and experience. Projects that involve many kinds of tasks (such as organizing a festival, which may involve music, business, media skills, graphic design, and outreach) will have omnibuses that cover these various areas.

Personal Omnibuses may contain a different topic on each page. (Luckily, you can decide whether each page is public or private.) So how do you search such a complicated library where there may be many subjects in one Omnibus? Weíll answer your questions inÖ

How To Find Things In The Library

Weíre creating a bunch of sophisticated ways to search the library, but the library will only be as easy to search as you make it. You can classify your contribution under a general category, and create custom tags for your work. These steps will make it much easier for others to find your work.

To help you find the best content in the Library, users will be able to rate everything in the library by four different standards: useful, unique, inspiring, and complete. You will be able to search by these ratings, and also by keywords that may be found in the title, body, or comments/discussion area of an Omnibus.