You may never again hear a student of any kind say this, but my favorite part of the course was the homework (a.k.a. activities). Without the expectation of producing something every week, it would have been very easy to put everything else off with good intentions of catching up later but never getting around to it. There's no replacement for getting in there and getting your hands dirty, and it provides a point of reference for everything else.

The "everything else" was wonderful too. The readings, the screencasts, the presentations were all practical and interesting. (My one suggestion on the screencasts was to indicate how long they are so we know how much time to plan for them). The chats were a great way to connect with other colleagues, and I'm looking forward to keeping that up in some way. I love my colleagues at my institution (well, most of them...), but it's really refreshing to step outside of our little world here and talk to others. You can do that to some extent at conferences (when you have the time and money to go), but that opportunity is rare, and it's harder to make connections at conferences, I think. You have too many social conventions getting in the way. You can't just walk up to a complete stranger and start sharing ideas about a particular project (well, you can, I guess).

Here it is almost midnight and I have to be up in a few hours, but I've been wandering around flickr and Facebook. My, what addictive new time-sinks I've discovered! They're enormously fun, but I don't see the immediate and direct practical applications for libraries that I saw with some of the other technologies we've explored. They strike me as a little clumsy. Some library applications have been interesting and innovative, such as training photos or tours in flickr, but frankly I think there are more elegant ways of doing those things on "traditional" webpages. And I think our students are more likely to find those things on our webpage than in flickr. I can see where the motivation to post those things in a more public social space might be greater for a public library.

While learning about wikis in 5 Weeks this week, in my parallel life at the library I attended a committee meeting for implementing a newly purchased content management system on our campus (PaperThin's CommonSpot). As I thought about possible applications this week for wikis in our library, in the back of my mind I kept asking, "or will our new content management system do this?"

Like many 5 weeksters, I really like the idea of wikis for subject guides. Chad's Biz Wiki is the incarnation of what I've been think about for a couple of weeks (intense research activity from our MBA students!). It could serve as a great model. I'm also interested in doing something with library policy manual, and perhaps developing a training tool for students at the reference desk.

All the issues that have come up at work this week are getting all mushed in with the stuff I've been learning in 5Weeks this week (in a good way). I'm filled with ideas and possibilities to explore.

• I keep coming up with additional resources for that MBA class that is is doing research for a lighting fixture company. Maybe I could do an RSS feed into their D2L classroom with suggestions as they come up. Or, since there are several groups in the class, all working on different aspects of the project, maybe a course WIKI would work, where everyone could post tips on where they found useful data.
• We have a bit of a training issue with our students at the reference desk. Maybe we could create a feed of sample reference questions for them to work through during slow times at the desk (rather than doing their homework). Furthermore, maybe they could all participate in a WIKI for answering these questions, and the WIKI would turn into some kind of research guide or training guide. (Ok, not really from this week's lesson, but the ideas don't always come during the assigned week).
• I'm having a heck of a time keeping up with all the D2L classrooms I'm supposed to be participating in as the embedded librarian. I like that RSS feed idea for pushing info into D2L. What I'd REALLY like would be an RSS feed that would send the library discussion posts from within D2L to me so I wouldn't have to log into each course separately.
• I end up doing so much work from home and, let's be honest, dealing with personal/family stuff at work (are they closing schools early today due to the snow storm? Gotta check the website). These delicious tags are already proving themselves invaluable in allowing me to deal with all the aspects of my life from wherever I happen to be. Browser bookmarks don't travel so well.

Other notes to self:

I've been giving a lot of thought this week to the blogging boom, quite honestly wondering, "what's the big deal?" Libraries have been putting up information on webpages, and elsewhere, for a long time. We've been getting feedback through email and other avenues for a long time. Yes, blogs offer a pretty easy way to do all that, but aren't we all a little too ga-ga over this blog-ability? As I've worked through the readings, the webcasts and the screencasts this week, I kept thinking, "Yeah, it's kinda cool... but what am I missing that makes blogging SO cool?"

Hi all, I hail from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where some of us are enjoying--and some resenting--an unusually mild and snowless January. I am in this course because I'm both intrigued and uncertain about the new technologies and what they can offer libraries. We have recently undergone a lot of technological change here, and many here are burned out on new technology. The thought of adding "social networking" because it's the latest and greatest has been met with much skepticism, which I fully appreciate. However, as the mother of a teenager and a tween, I know that it's important to know about this stuff if we hope to understand or even communicate with future students.