Thing 23: Blog about experience

Ah.. my final post.

It was been a very good experience. I really had to push myself at the end to finish, but I did. I was glad to have gone through everything and really learned a lot. It came at an excellent time as I am reviewing our library website and our library instruction program. This has given me some many excellent ideas and really sent me on my way on my learning curve. I feel much more empowered to continue to learn and advance. It was a great way to get up to speed. It was nice to know that others were in my same position and also learning along with me. This was an excellent experience. Thank you.

Thing 22: Staying Current

Ways to keep up-

I was finally able to find a few blogs that I might be glancing through. This entire project has helped me get up to speed in general. I have some good ideas about where to go from here. I will need to reorganize my RSS feeds and make them into a daily read.

I do try to take advantage of as many Mintex webinars as possible. These have been a big help. And also, it seems to be a good topic that is discussed more frequently as conferences and meeting now.

Thing 21: other social networks

I am not a member of any online communities. I looked through almost all of the these and can say that nothing really grabbed me. Even the groups on libraryland. It seemed like just the kind of stuff that I don't enjoy about conferences. I am not a networked. I definitely need information on various things, but querying people or reading their various comments is just not the way that I prefer to gather information. It seems like a big waste of thing and I rarely find anything of value or that is actually informing. I am warming a little to blogs as opinion pieces or even wikis as collections of information. But the social networking seems mostly like water cooler talk to me.

Thing 20: Facebook and Myspace

I have been trying myspace and facebook prior to this thing. It was good, I suppose, to have a little more guidance in these networks. I have a facebook account, but really it is too much for me. All this "transparency" is too much. I feel shy and stupid. I suppose I am an introvert by nature, and not even the distance of a medium using computers, typing and transmission lines is enough to make this feel isn't unnecessary exposure. I hated high school and never wish to return. This feels like the worst of it.

As to how this could work for my library...
I have been looking into how other libraries use myspace and facebook in my request to redo our website and bi program. I haven't found anything too earth-shaking in other libraries that are similar to mine. I agree that having a presence where student reside is a benefit, but I think that our first step should be moving into a presence in our institutions course management software. This is were students are centered for coursework and scholarship- let's exist there. not necessarily where students are socializing. This will also advantage us in terms of consistency when young people move onto the next social network or mind-meld-physic network.

I am not opposed to a limited presence in one of those networks, as a pointer. perhaps this will be down the road. I must prioritize.

Thing 19: Podcasts

I found podcasts difficult to use. I didn't want to need to subscribe to podcasts before listening to them. I found podcastalley.com needed login and downloading. Podcast.net wouldn't load. Education Podcast Directory wouldn't run the script one the first try, but I finally had better luck. I ended up listening to some new podcasts, interviews, and science information. It was interesting, but overwhelming. There is just too much information available. Versus text-based information sources, I like the control of browsing and starting and stopping that text allows me over video or audio files.


As far as providing the content of podcasts to my patrons, I don't feel prepared to give 'readers advisory" on that.
Providing this content via our website is a possibility for the future. I think this would be a good thing to come back to and try for more provision of resources thru this media. But perhaps the students at my college are already finding everything they need.

I do wonder how libraries (or indexers, etc) will provide access to this non-textual content. Is anyone "tagging" podcasts, etc for feeds that are comprised of a variety of parts and content. How will the specific information in podcasts be accessed.

This has not inspired me to podcast myself. Also, personally, I actually enjoy the small amounts of silence I am privileged to have!

Thing 18: Youtube and other sites

I am not a big fan of youtube personally. but at least it was interesting to watch videos on Second Life on it instead of actually registering

I think the library tours and tutorials are okay. I think in my BI and website redo, I will link to some tutorials that have been created by other libraries or database vendors. Again, a really good use of Creating those for our libraries is more time intensive than I have time for now. Perhaps that will be phase 6 or 7.

I didn't really care for the videos I tried. It felt like a waste of time in general. Some were kind of funny or interesting. I would rather watch a webinar to learn. I always had high hopes when choosing a clip, but my interest quickly fell.

I might try Jumpcut in the future.

Grade C-

Thing 17: ELM productivity tools

It was a stroke of luck for me to relook at the elm offerings. I had no idea that ebooks were offered! We were looking for some for our library and were thinking about purchasing a set from CPERS, but the price was a big chunk for our budget. Perhaps this will suffice.

I was unable to view the quicktime movies. We do not really consistenly do enough scholarly research in our library to warrant the need for SDI and folders.

I might be able to make use of the SDI and folders for my own research into library instruction. I will need to have more impetus before I devote the time to managing this. Currently, these things are productivity dehancers.