I sure did have fun this winter!

And it is all because of Five Weeks to a Social Library!!!

What were your favorite experiences in the course?
Working, playing and discovering with all of you! My favorite experiences were the webcasts, screencasts, activities and the group chats. I looked forward to my 11am group chat on Fridays. What a great group! Thank you so much for all your support and inspiring conversations. Honestly, I loved everything about this course.

Throughout this course, my enthusiasm for social software tools exploded each week! But the final week of this course truly provided excellent content for me to properly organize these ideas in order to sell them to my library.  The chat with Alice Sneary had me excited and buzzing for the rest of the day. We discussed various survey techniques and possible audiences. The conversation got me thinking about outreach ideas – finding the audience and figuring out ways to draw them in with these tools. It is vital that our libraries begin to think about branding and what we want to be known for, now and in the future.  

Welcome to the Library's 50th Anniversary Wiki!

Please click here to view my project wiki or here to only view my proposal.

I strongly agree that a shift has occurred in people of all ages from media consumers to media creators. Especially since people are spending so much time on the Internet - it only seems logical that the next step would be contributing/creating to online communities.  

So, I took that next step and downloaded the software for Second Life and created an avatar (My SL name is Ava Mertel). My first experience was somewhat strange. It was similar to a tutorial where you have to complete tasks in order to advance. I couldn’t wait to get to the next stage where I could alter my appearance. I was hideous and my hair …. Oh how should I put it, well I looked like a NKOTB groupie (not that anything was wrong with that 20 years ago!) After I played around with my appearance and tried to look halfway decent I moved on to the next phase. Actually, I had one mission – To find the Second Life Library. Well, first I have to say I am a SIMS lover and I initially went into SL thinking it would be similar. If you are new to MMOGs you might want to take more time in the orientation phase. I may have moved to fast from here due to my excitement of getting to the library and somehow teleported myself to what I imagine Hell must be like. Tons and tons of avatars crammed into one space – pure insanity! I conducted a search to get myself out of there but every time I tried to get out of Dante’s Inferno I was prompted with a message that the server was full. After awhile I was finally able to teleport to the Library and it was such a breath of fresh air. However, not much was going at the time I arrived. Info Island is made up of 10 different islands (Second Life Library, Consumer health Island, EduIsland, etc.). When you arrive calendars are available to check events. Some cool events that were going on the following day were – “Game Design” and “Teens, publishing and technology”. You can easily pick up free education news for the week. 

This week’s activities sparked an interesting idea of how to use Flickr for training purposes. We are in the process of implementing a “Library Greeter” program at our public library. The first step of implementation was to conduct a survey – this survey was used to gauge areas where staff may need training in order to feel comfortable in this new position. We have yet to move into the phase of conducting training sessions in the areas that resulted in needing assistance.

Some things the survey revealed and how Flickr can help answer questions:

• How do I work the Self Check Out machine (take step by steps photos of this process checking out various materials)
• Where is the nearest photocopier? How do I work them?
• Where is PTS located? - Parent Teacher Section (create a photo map of the library layout using Flickr)

It would be great to implement these photos in a “ Library Greeter Training Wiki” that is composed of the greeter training manual, greeter survey, FAQ’s, Flickr photos, helpful tips on how to be a great greeter, staff could add patron questions that arise that may help other greeters, etc. I think using Flickr could be an innovative way to get this project underway.

The article A Contributor to Wikipedia Has His Fictional Side in today's NYT, "shows how the transparency of the Wikipedia process — all editing of entries is marked and saved — allows readers to react to suspected fraud." Just thought I would share.

Wikis were all the rage this week! I never knew that a wiki could be used in so many different ways. After exploring various library wikis, conducting wiki tool comparisons, and taking part in the outstanding course content for this week,I have come up a few ideas of ways to use wikis in my library.

Idea 1: A “Fiftieth Anniversary Wiki” – Our library is planning a fiftieth anniversary celebration. Calling back to the days the Library was founded – all activities have one goal: To reinforce the “Growing for Generations” campaign. So, I thought wouldn’t a wiki be a perfect implementation for this project. We could begin with an internal wiki, which we would use to collaborate adding information for each time period (1957, 1967, 1977, etc.), include a project calendar (possibly 30 boxes), and discuss project details (ex.: Jerry Mathers is kicking off the event – “Leave It to Beaver”). Then I think it would be great to allow the community to contribute to the library wiki. This would provide such rich content possibly from each era. Also this would be a great way to promote the event! I think by using a wiki the community will feel like they are truly apart of the “Growing for Generations” campaign.

I stayed up so late last night doing the optional activities for this week. I know I am becoming addicted... but I just had so much fun and learned so much by actually doing it. So as I have mentioned before I have a "Girls Night Out" book discussion group at the library and I thought this would be a perfect way to test adding RSS feeds.

• Step 1: I signed up for a Gmail account, so that I could create a web page in Google Page Creater.
• Step 2: Chose a theme and layout for my page.
• Step 3: Used Feed2JS to incorporate feeds into the page. (one from The Chick Tale Lounge & another from NYT Thursday Styles)
• Step 4: Then I incorporated a feed from Library Thing. (just a small selection of the books we've read)
• Step 5: I used Grazr to practice putting in a box of information from Trashionista.

I had so much fun playing around - you should try it out. Even though this is just a test page. I plan to put some real information in to show my group. Thought I would share my example - Girls Night Out! (in progress - I plan on adding del.icio.us bookmarks too.)

In everything there are strengths and weaknesses -card catalogs, OPAC’s, and the Internet are not perfect. But what is important is embracing the direction in which information is moving. Back to my question, would Charles Ammi Cutter agree with social bookmarking tools? Some would say, “Absolutly not!”  - while others would say, “He would think it was a Del.ico.us way to catagorize information”.  I myself am a Reference Librarian, so I stand by what the FRBR defined in 1998, that a library catalog's goals and functions should follow four user tasks: find, identify, select, and obtain. The Internet consists of a vast amount of information in a variety of formats and we need to look to new ways to catagorize this information. Even though social bookmarking has been around since 1996, it was only a matter a time before this form of cataloging blew up the scene. It only seems necessary that “folks –y” start cataloging the mass amount of information on the Internet. We need some way to keep track and classify the information on the Web – Social Bookmarking helps untangle the information we discovered and create ways for us to use it over and over.  

Libraries can be a cool place to use social bookmarking, whether it is for staff or patrons. I hope to set up a Del.ico.us account for librarians to use at the Reference desk. Right now we have about 100 bookmarks saved in favorites, some in folders but many just haphazardly thrown in – for a quick fix. However, I notice that in a hurry to find answers, it is much easier to look it up again in Google then it is to sort through the mess of saved favorites. Also, subject guides would be a great way to use social bookmarking for reference. We also have two Consumer Health Librarians and social bookmarking specific information for them would be highly useful. RSS feeds would also help them greatly!  There LOTS of ways libraries can take part in using social bookmarking tools to categorize the web of information we encounter everyday!   

While checking out some of the del.icio.us posts for 5weeks, I noticed Michelle's article listed twice. This confused me a bit. I realize that through social bookmarking we may begin to start adding/saving the same bookmarks leading to a folksonomy. However, the title being listed twice is what confuced me instead of listed once saved by X amount of people. Maybe it was saved differently, thus creating two entries or maybe I'm confused (it's quite possible that I'm seeing double at 11pm right now). Anyway, it just seems that this would create an overlap - could someone explain why two entries exist? 
Thanks :)