#23: The End (or the Beginning?)

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? Without a doubt becoming a blogger was my favorite discovery activity.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? If nothing else, the program has taught me that I am able to effectively learn new technology skills and that there are 2.0 internet technologies that have practical application in both my work life and in my private life. Yes, I can use technology to my advantage! I can even learn to play on the internet -- something I seldom if ever do.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? Now when I read library literature or receive emails from various listservs that talk about Library 2.0 I actually understand what they are saying! That and the fact that I even (on my own) established a Facebook account -- who would have thought ...

More importantly, throughout this program I was attempting to identify how these new internet technologies could assist with communication within the Libraries. Part of the R2 recommendations included the usage of Web 2.0 tools to improve things like finding the correct contact person in Technical Services. Now that staff have been exposed to these informational tools, I'm more hopeful that we will be able to design some new ways of creating and sharing information within the Libraries about the department.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? The self-discovery approach was just great and allowed me to go at my own pace and to repeat segments as needed. Many of the excersises took much more time than 30-60 minutes to complete so perhaps smaller segments for some of the assignments would have been better. Lesson #8 on RSS feeds, for example, was extremely difficult and took a lot of time to complete.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate? Yes!

#21: Podcasts, Smodcasts!

I am familiar with iTunes U but did not know that there were podcast directories. I really didn't find any podcasts that were of interest to me and can't imagine seeking out such things. Compared to the other informational tools we have been exploring, podcasts are rather boring.

#20: You too can YouTube

I actually use YouTube quite a bit – especially for presentations. I am always amazed at the number of videos that have to do with libraries or librarians. My most favorite YouTube video, however, is an ad in French for the movie “March of the Penguins.” In France the movie was entitled “March of the Emperor” and this ad is too, too funny. It is a must see: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_mlwnAmr0

#19: Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

I tried out Writeboard (www.writeboard.com). This is an online application that allows groups of individuals to do text editing in a collaborative manner. You can also subscribe to documents via RSS feeds (and be notified of changes) as well as share multiple versions of edited documents with others. Lots of good possibilities for doing some work-related assignments and for committee work. Using Writeboard lead me to another application called "Backpack" that can be used to keep your writings organized. I set-up some "to do" list and then emailed the list to myself. Lots of possibilities with this nifty tool!

#18: Web-based Applications

Was very easy to set-up a Zoho account. Seems to work just like MS Word -- very easy to use. I like the special characters table and the fact that when you save the document it automatically gives you a word and character count. Had a little bit of a problem trying to rename my file -- it really doesn't like it if you accidently delete the whole name -- had to force a logoff and login again. Wow -- just emailed myself one of the documents I wrote using Zoho Writer -- now that was pretty cool! Could not figure out how to post to my blog ...

#16: Wikis

The "Library Success: A Best Practice Wiki" was the most interesting site. I looked under the category "Cataloging" and there were some nice links to interesting projects, articles, websites, and blogs. I did not know that there was a Catalogablog or a FRBR blog, for example. It was really nice to have links to items of interest to catalogers on one convenient site. I found the article "Cataloging the blogosphere" particularly intriguing!

We tried to use a Wiki last January as part of the Unicorn GL3.1 Java Client upgrade as a way for catalogers system-wide to share functionality they discovered or questions they had within a collaborative web environment space. There was some traffic on the wiki but really not as much as we had anticipated. The PCC also tried to introduce Wikis this year as a means for groups to utilize this online tool for sharing information -- replacing the more traditional email listservs and websites. There was quite a bit of resistance and practically no buy-in because people saw this as just "another place to have to check for information."

I can see how useful this tool could be for conference/meeting planning, the collaborative editing of documents, links to other informational sites, etc. Particularly nice for those of us who never mastered HTML.

#15: Library 2.0

The various perspectives on Library 2.0 were very interesting. As I was reading about this topic, I couldn't help but try to put this within the context of what these changes mean for those of us who work in technical services operations. Questions I wrote down to ponder at a later date included the following:

• How will the changes on the public side continue to directly impact the way technical services operations perform their work in the future?
• How can we reinvent the services we provide to meet our stakeholders/partners in their space as opposed to ours?
• How can we make our services more user-centric and inviting?
• How can we evoke Web 2.0 principles to develop newer services that are more simplistic, customer-friendly, and more self-service?
• How can we improve the way we work with our stakeholders so that they are truly participants, co-creators, builders, and consultants?

I particularly enjoyed reading Michael Stephens' thoughts on how to be a "Librarian 2.0." How do we not only embrace constant change, but also make " ... good, yet fast decisions"? How do we find the time in the workday to watch trends, play and learn about new technologies, etc.?

Two interesting quotes from the Wikipedia entry on Library 2.0 were particularly interesting

"Beta is forever."

"Rigidity breeds
failure."

I see that more pondering is in order ...