Hi from Nova Scotia

Hi, my name is Linda Bedwell, a reference and instruction librarian at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  I’m new to librarianship - freshly hired from library school in Sept ’05 - although I bring with me 10 yrs’ experience in contracts administration and project management.  As a new librarian, I’m intrigued by new tools, such as social technologies – I guess because they’re new to all (most?) of us.  The library I work at, the Killam Memorial, is the campus library for arts and social sciences, science, and management.  We are fairly slow to add social technologies to our library services (we have just recently implemented an online chat-based reference service for users of our Learning Commons – and this has met with some resistance from library staff).   Observing this, I’ve become interested in adding social technologies, particularly wikis, to our website (which has recently been overhauled and requires some Web 2.0 touches) in such a way that garners collegial support.  In essence, what I hope to gain from Five Weeks’ is a formal introduction to social technologies, the courage to try them out, and the confidence to introduce and teach them to my colleagues, so that together we can keep our web-based services, library catalogue, subject guides, etc., current with the information-seeking behaviour of our users.