This course exceeded my expectations on every level, and I am so happy to have been a part of it. I have learned so much! Reflecting on the experience has made me realize just how much information I have absorbed over the past few weeks. I could go on and on, but it wouldn't be very structured, so here are my answers to the questions posed by the 5weeks creators:

Favorite Experiences:

• Webcasts (once I got all the technology glitches worked out on my old computer - easy solution was to just buy a new one!). I particularly enjoyed the webcast on flickr given by Steve and Michael - they were so much fun!
• Weekly online chats - I really got used to the dynamic of online chatting (which I had never done before) and learned what it takes to communicate effectively in that medium.
• Variety of sources of information - podcasts, online readings, screencasts - all were effective in their own ways and got me used to using them.
• Reading other peoples blogs and profiles and meeting such great people!
• Looking at the other 5weeks members Flickr photos

Technology most useful to me:

After reading and watching screencasts for week 5 I really got to thinking about what it means to be a new librarian who is trying to implement change. I am in my first professional position and luckily I work in a library that is open to new technologies and wants to remain as current as possible, but I hear from friends who are new in their libraries who find a very different type of climate. They work in libraries where change is looked at with suspicion and new ideas, especially from a new librarian, are not taken seriously. Reading Karen Coombs article (which I forwarded to said friends) really helped me (even in my friendly-to-change library) clarify what makes a new technology embraced. First of course, make sure the social software if fool-proof and easy - all the technologies we have learned about in this class fall into this category, which will be much to our advantage in the coming years as things like Blogger, wikis, bloglines and del.icio.us become even more prevalent. Of course proper training goes without saying. Promoting the benefits of change and how it will help make the library more useful and how it will make the lives of the librarians who work there easier is of utmost importance too. But another tactic which I mentioned in our web chat on Thursday last week was the importance of gaining allies in your move for change - as a new librarian it can be highly beneficial to get one of the more experienced librarians on your side. With someone who is more established in the library culture you can go much further, plus you can both learn from each other!

Learning about del.icio.us was one of the most important aspects of this class for me. And watching Jason Griffey's webcast  (Make Your Library del.icio.us) just brought it home even more. I have already posted a blog about how RSS has changed my life forever, but every day I am reminded about how cool RSS really is and how incredibly useful tools like del.icio.us can be for libraries. One of the first points Jason made was that del.icio.us was FAST & EASY - and this is a huge selling point for both patrons and other librarians and administrators. Tying it in with what we learned about selling social software, Jason's webcast gives lots and lots of ways to sell this social software tool.

Rebecca Hedreen's webcast on blogs was one of the most informative sessions for me - after getting over some technical difficulties I was able to join in at the Opal room and was treated to my first ever live webcast. At first it was distracting to see everyone's comments on the side of the screen, but it was great to see people talking to each other about what Rebecca was saying. The many different uses for blogs and their relevance to libraries was something I had never thought about - but the idea that blogs are built in commenting systems was something that really rang true for me. Blogs are great, but it is the comments (and the community created by the comments) that really make it a phenomenal tool for libraries - and it is what one hopes for when a library institutes a blog of any kind, whether it is an internal staff one or a new materials blog, or a suggestion box blog. I was amazed at the gallery blog, the novel blog and her idea of using a blog to give presentations with - all of these things were ideas I had never even thought of!

Thinking back to week 1, I am glad to see that re-reading (or at least skimming again) and looking at the examples about blogs in libraries after finishing this course has allowed me to see so many more possibilities for blogs in libraries. I initially thought that blogs might not be the best thing for a library, and that wikis were the way to go as they are searchable and are not arranged by time posted. But looking at Kansas State's extensive blog has made me think again. K State's blog is extremely in depth, but the fact that you can subscribe to certain feeds makes it extremely useable and not overwhelming. I still wonder about upkeep and interest, but as I have learned over the course of this class, that is a constant concern and not one that there is an easy answer to. To maintain interest in a new technology librarians must be the ones who are enthusiastic about it and must make it a part of their everyday lives. The only way to do this is to participate in classes like this - at the beginning of this class I thought blogs were only used as internal staff blogs for library news and announcements - but after looking at K State's blog and VCU libraries blog suggestiong box I definitely have a different view point.

Well, we're starting to work (again) on our wiki which we started a month or so ago - and now we plan on working on it more because of this class!

I know it is very rough and not much happening yet, but check back in the next month or so and I promise there will be more! 

 http://www.nvclibrary.pbwiki.com/

Proposal for Implementing an Internal Staff Wiki at Northwest Vista College

Technology to be implemented: Wiki

A wiki is an easy way to create a web page with very little technical knowledge. One need not know HTML or any other markup language. Wikis are a collaborative tool in that anyone can add or edit content on the page.

In this case I am proposing that we establish an internal staff wiki for our library. Only the staff and work-study students would have access to it and its main goal would be to improve communication between everyone in the library. All staff would benefit from this, especially the part-time staff and faculty as it would keep them updated on a daily basis of what has gone on while they may not have been there. The wiki would provide a documented record of important events within the library to keep everyone informed equally. A wiki would create a searchable, collaborative knowledge base for our library that would help us all keep up with what is going on rather than depending on word of mouth or emails.

Well, this week was one of those weeks where I had absolutely no free time and was expected to be in several different places at the same time. So I didn't get a chance to attend the Second Life webcast - instead I watched the archived version which, although I was sorry I missed it live, was nice because it gave me the chance to pause the dialog and replay sections over again when I needed to. I have to admit first off that I was never a video game player (they were not allowed in my house) and therefore have some kind of prejudice and a lack of understanding about computer games of any sort. So I was happy to learn quite a bit about what really is involved in the various types of MMOG's.

Every day at my library at least half of all the students I see on computers are on MySpace - in fact, there are some times when I have to be "mean" librarian and tell people who are checking their MySpace account to get off computers when there are students who need to use them for school work (the students are great about this though, they understand they don't have priority when only surfing MySpace). We are currently in the process of moving around our teaching lab so that we can see all the student's screens because we have found that they are even on MySpace during instructions sessions (surprise surprise) - so finding a way to use MySpace in my library is something I am very interested in.

The webcast about Flickr this week was absolutely so much fun! Michael and Steve made it entertaining and educational at the same time and it was a great way to spend Tuesday night while my husband cooked me dinner! I learned a lot about Flickr that I never knew about like geo-tagging, tags in general and groups I never knew existed (like the Librarians Desks group, which I definitely want to join and add a picture to!) I joined the Libraries + Librarians group and explored some of those pictures. Although I joined Flickr a few months ago I hadn't done too much exploring, and although I had put some pictures up I hadn't tagged them - so I made sure to tag them (especially after joining the librarians group which stresses the importance of tagging images) I then spent some time looking at pictures of Jaco Beach in Costa Rica where I will be vacationing in May - its amazing to me how many thousands of photos there are of every conceivable subject! Next I plan on experimenting with putting boxes in some of my photos with notes attached to them (as seen in the webcast)