Final reflections

I liked the blog because I tend to like writing so my thoughts deep or otherwise are important to me. I like the idea of sharing them although the audience who reads this is a tad small.) I liked the flickr mashups and image generators because they can make the text and the look of what's online more eyecatching and likely to attract an audience. Delicious helps keep all these sites organized. You tube appeals to my need to have a mental health break PLUS the videos con provide useful and frequently painless education. I feel similarly about podcasts. All in all the things I mentioned are items I think have definite usefulness at my worksite.

Not quite sure about twitter and im. Twitter goes against my need to explain and to get my meaning across. I don't see that as happening in a FEW words; and im goes against my need to not always be found. I don't want to be instantly contacted and on a bad day I'm not sure who in this universe does.

I'd like to thank the NTRLS for doing this. It was intersting and forced me to try my hand at literally a range of activities that usually I would have said I have no time for.

how to develop a program at my library

I'll admit it 23 things was great but time consuming. I have read some of the comments from staff and I'll be honest you get from a thing what you put into it. The summer is a relatively slow period of time. I for one am tired of people whining about everything they are asked to do. If I were to take this 23 things idea I'd do the following.

Before the end of the present year my library would have a wrap up of all 23 things and maybe divide them into categories: publicity, document creation,etc... Have staff vote on their top 5 and then the following year during the summer have staff working individually or with a partner on something that could be shown to fellow workers at the end of the summer. Perhaps, even the products could be rolled out to library board.

I know this took long but we can't stay in our hermetically sealed offices or we will be outsourced even more than we are and will have only ourselves to blame.

Podcast

I listened to booktalks through a public library; casts from a law school's speaker series and listened to a college's author series. The latter appeared to be speakers from their faculty. This has some possibilities. I am curious who is listening. We are short staffed in my humble opinion and I think in terms of how to maximize our presence. I'd like to do a few of these because e.g. when we had our graphics novel program we might as well have milked that baby for all it was worth. Ditto when we had a Darwin Day program. Both were well attended so again milking it for maximum exposure would be a good thing.

You tube

By now who hasn't looked at Y T. I did see one video in particular on information commons that I believe would be good to show to an ad hoc committee that I need to be creating in additon to working on world peace! It is not too short and creates I hope a buzz on what is happening in library world.

Yes, you tubes could be useful as a means of starting a conversation, e.g. customer service. I sort of liked the video with the angry librarian. You have to screen (as one might suspect) the products but there are great videos. We created one for National Library Week. It was not a real toe tapper but it is a start. I appreciate the staff member who was willing to do something and get the party started.

Google doc

I like this. I will admit I am trying to finish all 23 just because so I am not pondering heavily any of these near the end. We have outsiders (non MSU community people) who need or want to use Microsoft. Maybe this could be an option. It may not have all the bells and whistles but if it does the job that's fine. Google is in the mindset that all the bells and whistles are NOT necessarily always that important. I only tried the documents because I am taking an online course and need to spend time on that. I like the fact that the most widely desired products -spread sheet,powerpoint,et al are available.

Plus if you wanted others to see and comment you can share the work in a seamless fashion. I think this is a good example of one of those 23 things.

wikipedia - evil product or new found friend

I think I was asked to speak about it. It's there we all use it so we might as well stop getting our panties in a wad. Now if we could figure out ways to instruct so that students, teachers,etc... could see how this information is organized that would be good. When I began to look at the discussion history of different topics that was fascinating to me how back and forth a topic goes. I don't consider that a bad thing but one that researchers young and old need to be told about. Mind you I don't know how to sell our abilities in this area but we have potential instructional services we could be selling vs. whining and kvetching how people use this horrible source that by the way we all do as well.

Wiki

The experience was painless. It's ironic since I'm taking an online course in Reading Education. One of the tasks was to create a wiki on reading methods instruction. The wiki there seemed ripe with problems. I guess all wikis need active interest. Right now I am overwhelmed with work to do at work in general. I think if I had time this might be of appeal. I'm on a few do gooder groups boards where working on projects through a wiki might not be a bad ideal.