Addendum to Final Thoughts

OK, this is really funny. Just on the outside chance that I might lose my work in Zoho, I saved a copy of my post to Word. Well, that was my first act of genius today! When I tried to post to my blog from zoho all I got was a lock up. I tried it 3 times and it didn't go so back I went to good old Word, thank you Bill Gates, and copied and pasted my work into the blogspot. Once again the old familiar is the best!

Final Thoughts

Well, even though I was away I think I was able to catch up on all the weeks of this program. The only thing I may not have written about is Zoho. I'm on there now and writing this in Zoho. This is a fabulous thing for those people who just hate the MS monopoly. It can be used as a kind of political statement. I personally believe that the Gates family does much good with their money so I'll likely stick with the obvious but you never know when you'll be on a computer that doesn't offer the MS office products.

So, thoughts about this program? Hmmmmm. I would say that my favorite discovery was not so much a product I learned how to use as it was the creativity and effort that my fellow staff members put into their blogs. It was a real eye opener to learn about those we work side by side with but don't really get to delve into.

As I opined in the beginning of this exercise my goal is to not be left behind in the information age. So many times we have patrons come to the library - men and women my age - who use their age and supposed lack of work experience as a badge of pride in their ignorance of basic computer skills. I don't ever want to be one of them. I don't understand how people can expect to function in society without joyfully embracing the sense of accomplishment that comes with being a lifelong learner.

Technology is changing at the speed of light and I worry that we'll never have the time to really keep up. Unless one uses these various programs every day one could never become truly adept at all the fine tuning that can be done. I love the concept of this program and I applaud the library administration for encouraging us to participate as part of our work day. I'm wondering if there was 100 % buy-in from those in supervisory positions though. I've heard some grumblings from staffers who simply cannot find the time in their busy day to give this learning and discovery experiment the time that it deserves. Even those of us who were already experienced at many of these applications cannot come close to doing what's required in an hour a week. The result is that we are working on this from home or multi tasking like mad. I think there needs to be a more organized way of making sure that all staff members are allowed equal time to work on an all-staff learning project. Other than that, I feel that this was a fabulous idea and I would likely participate in another such program if it was about a subject that I was even remotely interested in. Since I'm a librarian, I guess we'll assume that it would be!

Week 10 (and a little 9)

I'd just love to win a day off with pay so that I can catch up on all the reading I've missed while playing to learn! My other blog is suffering while I familiarize myself with all the glories of web 2.0.
I will never cease to be amazed at how many zillions of people there are out there who are overly impressed with their own less than stellar talents. Youtube is their home! I've used it in the past but only on a limited basis, generally for political purposes. I've watched the Youtube democratic party debates and I've been to the "Obama Girl" site because I am one. I've also gotten a real kick out of the Youtube video of the book cart drill team presentations at ALA. Otherwise I just don't find time for this kind of thing. It takes me away from reading.

Podcasting comes in handy for me because, as a working person I miss so many radio interviews involving books and politics. My friend Don will send me podcast links to the things he knows I'd enjoy, usually from Diane Rehm or NPR, and I download them to my mp3 player to enhance my exercise routine. It's a fabulous thing! As is our download library. I don't know what I did without it. It is so simple to use (once you're on high speed Internet that is) and the dirty little secret is that those downloads never go away if you don't want them to. You can take your own sweet time listening.

OK, is this my final entry?

Still catching up - Week 8

OK folks, I've spent WAY too much time on this today! First off I took a look at del.icio.us and found that it would fill no practical need for me at all.
Then I played around on technorati which was actually kind of fun. I was interested to learn what the top 100 "subscribed to" blogs are as I'm fascinated by popular culture and what types of information the general public is interested in. I mucked about with the tags that were of interest to me and found that they can lead you to some totally irrelevant sites. Kind of like a "general keyword" search which drives me nuts in its broad scope.

As to wikis - well - hmmmmm. I absolutely see that there could be fabulously practical uses for these but I'm still hugely uncomfortable with the fact that anyone can accidentally or deliberately change your post to a wiki. As a matter of fact I just now almost accidentally changed one in Sheldon's Play House! Eek.

I was led to a website for book discussion mavens called BookMovement.com which I really liked even though it didn't have any discussion questions for the book I'm talking about tomorrow here at SC! That's ok, I don't generally use the questions anyway, I was simply testing the efficacy of the site. Also found out that we can post book reviews of our own to WorldCat. That was an eye opener.

I managed to get my blogspot posted in Sheldon's Play House but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get some of my vacation photos up there. Lucky for you guys - you won't have to be bored with those! That's all the techie stuff I can handle for today.

Playing Catch Up!

I'm back from vacation and going through that "breaking in" period where you try to remember what exactly we're doing here! With a book discussion and a reference workshop due in the next week I'm definitely thinking the "play to learn" needs to be on the back burner for a few more days.

Still, I feel guilty when I don't check in each week to see what's happening with my co-workers on their way to being techno-geniuses. I have to tell you, in talking with friends and hearing that most of them still don't have time to do these weekly projects at work but rather, must do them at home on their own time, I still have reservations about the efficacy of the program. It seems that we are adding to the techno-stress of our staff rather than relieving them of the burden of not understanding what our patrons are facing.

Of course, here at SC most of our patrons still need to be walked through Word or hand carried to their e-mail provider, so Web 2.0 is like another planet to them. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm for these new technologies when we deal with patrons who pride themselves on their Luddite tendencies!

I've read through the blogs for week 7 and especially enjoyed Michael Stephens. He seems to have a more balanced philosophy of Web 2.0 and its impact on libraries. While I totally agree that we've got to be 10 steps ahead of our customers all the time to remain relevant (which is why I SO see the importance of making Chat Reference a permanent part of our reference delivery service), I still envision the library as a haven for the non-techies who come to us to learn language skills, participate in innovative programming, or introduce their kids to books and the glory of words. Let's not forget these people in our drive to be wired.

Social Networking

OK, no one believes me but the fact of the matter is that I'm really not that social. I love my privacy and my quiet time. On the other hand, I like to be up on things and take pride in knowing what's going on locally and in the world. So.....I'm familiar with social networking sites and at Kat on the Beach's invitation I did create a MySpace page several months ago. The trouble is, I never go to it and honestly could just care less about it. I just had to prove to myself that I could do it.

I do think it's a fascinating phenomenon and love the idea of libraries being out there on My Space. Of course, I knew that our Askalibrarian service has a presence there and I can tell from reading over the transcripts that it is used. Fantastic!

I didn't go check on the ubiquitous Tom only because I was at Swofford's Alley first and saw the answer to the question!

I'm having trouble concentrating on our project this week as I'm trying to get all my work caught up before I leave for vacation Weds. Talk to you all when I return!

What great co-workers!

I just want to say a word about what I see as the very best outcome of this 10 week exercise. It's really not even about becoming more adept at technology, although that's certainly a plus. It's really about teamwork! I've been so impressed reading all you folks' blogs. Almost everyone writes, "thanks to so and so for helping me, I was able to put up an RSS feed, or I was able to load my photos to the web." This is fantastic.

Library Sue, another one of our tech gurus, has just given me a hint regarding another picture site that seems to work smoother than those generators. Too bad though because I really liked the photo I generated. It was a lovely, big 747 on a runway with the logo "Wanderlust" on it. Speaking of wanderlust, I'll be getting out of Dodge for a few weeks and won't be able to complete my assignments in a timely manner. Sorry, but I doubt I'll be blogging from the cruise ship. At least not on this blog - maybe on my book blog though since I plan to cart at least 6 books with me (not to mention the 3 on my mp3) and Don will have his laptop.

I went to Library Thing, made ANOTHER account (good thing we're writing down all these passwords) and then I made a list of some of my favorite reads. It's somewhat interesting to see how many people who are on LibraryThing read the same titles that you do and I guess I could see that, if I was really lonely and had no one to talk to about books, I might enjoy speaking with one of the other 300-some folks in the whole of LibraryThing land who, like me, mention Frank Rich's autobiography Ghost Light as one of their all-time favorites. I kind of doubt I'll be back there too often.