Reflections on Week 1

I came into this course knowing a little about each technology we would be covering. I knew the most about blogging, but I had difficulties envisioning its uses and how to maintain and "sell" it. I find it interesting that the simple exposure to others talking about and doing blogging has cleared up these issues surprisingly fast. Experiential learning was always my style. Hats off to the Five Weeks organizers for providing this learning environment for aspiring social net-workers! However, since I really should pin down those things that I specifically learned, I will attempt to identify what points were the most meaningful to me. If one does not want to be saddled with the entire responsibility of posting and maintaining the blog, staff should be enlisted to help. And, to that end, staff training is critical as unfamiliarity with blogs in all its technical aspects can be daunting and repellent to staff who have never been exposed to this social software. Happily, we have already begun staff training here at the CSU-Pueblo Library so all may participate in our blog.

The discussion in Nanette’s chat revealed the different blog software that is available. We use WordPress here. I would be interested, though, to play around with some other blogs to see which is the most versatile. How the blog is to be used is also an important issue because we want to entice readership. It should, then, be relevant to our goals and to the needs of our users. I have decided, based upon, the posts and presentations that the CSU-Pueblo Library News and Events blog will likely contain more than news and events; it will have photos and del.icio.us links as well as a regular section to post new books to the collection. I think an IM the Librarian widget will be a great addition to the blog. I found myself at the end of last week opening up our blog and adding all sorts of widgets to it. I used to be tentative about adding things to the blog, but Friday I went “hogwild” and had a great time. Stay tuned for my take on RSS and Social Bookmarking….