library non-fiction

library non-fiction

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Thoughts

I have gone through many of the Things, but not blogged after each one. I have read all the blogs for NLLN and enjoy the different perspectives. I can pick out some of the librarians just from being in the field so long.... Some of our staff got lost on Thing #1...oh,oh...I am thinking we can go over some of these as a group at staff meetings. Uff da, too much information for us to keep track of!!

Thing #4 Flickr

Ah, yes....I have boxes and boxes and even more boxes of photos in my basement! They will never be organized. Flickr is grrreat! I can see it for library use and it would be fun to have a class in it because a great deal of time can be spent in just fooling around with it. I love the Library of Congress and St John's and St Ben's. To actually look at the book titles is so fun. Just like on Horizon, our automated system. We thought we were in heaven when the book covers, enhanced content, were added and these two libraries have taken it a step further.

Thing #3 RSS

Oh how I Love this! I have been using it for awhile at different sites just hitting on the icon. I look and look and look everyday and now with this handy little tool I will not be spending so much time searching. It now comes to me instantly! I have set up nine feeds so far on bloglines. With it notifying me every ten minutes it is making me jump! I think it will be very useful for staff to use at the library as well for our customers. We can set up all things related to books and for book clubs. The amount of information is overwhelming and to have it organized in this way should help to weed out all the stuff in between. I LOVE those videos. Not boring. fast moving. great teaching tool. Really simple instruction for really simple syndication.

Thing #2 What is Library 2.0

Very interesting. Stephen Abrams was very informative. I have already learned a lot, but it is still the time element that is creating problems. I find it difficult to find time or "quiet time" at work, so I am doing this at home. Our staff is doing it in groups and some people alone and it is interesting to hear their discussions and read their blogs. Some of us do not have the level of comfort or expertise on the computer let alone any knowledge of 2.0. The Internet has changed our work and home lives immensely and if we want to keep up with technology we have to hop on for the ride or be run over. I am hoping that 23 Things will keep us at least holding onto the bumper and help us to recognize many of these terms and ideas if we hear them. It used to be that we as librarians were on top of all this. Not so anymore. Our customers, especially kids, are pretty savvy in many of these areas. When I took library classes in the 80's the use of computers was just beginning. We automated our library in 97 and look how far we have come since then....miles and miles and more to go. What ever happened to the cutter tables and those blocks you put in a shelf to hold the place for a book?? Oh, are we moving ahead or above or what??