Debby's Blog - Formally Debby's 23 Things: July 2007

Monday, July 30, 2007

Week 7 Wikis - Things 16 & 17

I really enjoyed this Week. Wikis are just cool!
I got all sorts of ideas for our library to explore - blogs and e-newsletters for library customers and online book club blog or wiki, for a few. Webjunction's Using wikis to create online communities was packed full of great information.

Maybe we should do a Wiki for our local history vertical file.... I definitely think we should re-do our staff intranet as a Wiki. It would give other staff permission to post helpful information and spread the responsibility over all of us.

I registered with Merlin and Maryland libraries sandbox. I entered my blog in the sandbox and added a comment to the list of comments from other knitting librarians (and learned about a knitting blog).

My bird club doesn't have a web site - time and expertise not being available. I see a bird club wiki coming down the pike!

Monday, July 23, 2007

Now that I'm done with Week 6 - Time for some comic relief

Thing #15 - Perspectives on Web 2.0

I watched YouTube video "The Machine is Us/ing Us". Technology is not just for computer geeks anymore - it's for all of us. It's getting easier in one sense, but it's growing and expanding so quickly, it's a challenge to keep up and figure out what we need to know and use here at the library.
I read "Into a New World of Librarianship". One statement really stood out for me - we need to pay attention to our users - "This librarian understands that the future of libraries will be guided by how users access, consume and create content."
"Away from the Icebergs" - really meaningful --
--it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get. They aren’t. In fact, it may no longer make sense to “collect” in the traditional sense at all.
--Libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching...if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons.
--We have to be a bit more humble in the current environment, and find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. At a minimum, this means placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web); even better, it means integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play.