23. Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog and learn about where to go from here.
Wow, summarizing my thoughts about this program as a whole might be challenging, as I’ve tended to be a bit verbose in my individual posts. The aspect that I like the most was that after going through these 23 things, I look at the world, both my work environment and my life, a bit differently. I see ways to utilize certain technologies to improve communication, to facilitate discussion, to encourage sharing. I’ve created a blog for a political organization I’m involved in, and I am hoping to catalog the books in the library of a community organization with LibraryThing. I have also set up a wiki for the Great Picture Books committee that I’m chairing this year, after realizing that we still have a lot to discuss and thinking about ways to speed up discussion (particularly of the titles that aren’t so great).
I’ve also learned that there needs to be a balance between embracing new technologies and tools and just going crazy trying to use all of them even if they may not be the best option. While some of these tools can be amazing assets to libraries, some are good to know about, particularly to help customers with, but won’t truly improve library services. When a library becomes so crazy about new technologies simply for the sake of new technologies, I think it loses credibility with staff that aren’t such early embracers. I’ve encountered this already in conversations about Library 2.0 and possible uses of it. If you mention creating a wiki, you’re met with knowing eye rolls…i.e. it’s the next big thing that we’re going to have to survive rather than seeing how sometimes, a wiki really could improve how things are done!!! I believe that libraries do need to incorporate some of these technologies into our services, but we need to do it selectively in order to prevent the next-big-thing mentality. However, selectively does not necessarily mean slowly.
I’ve also enjoyed the online community this has created and the unexpected interactions between people at HCPL and from elsewhere. The concept that someone found my blog, linked to it, and quoted it on their blog was just incredible! And I would definitely participate in another discovery activity like this one! I’m a big fan of self-directed learning and the flexibility it offers.
So overall, learning Library 2.0 has been an incredible, eye-opening experience, both by teaching me how to use these new technologies and by enabling me to imagine the array of ways some of these tools could be used to improve library services.
