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:

I'm thinking of creating a flickr account for our organization and posting a number of photos relating to our green building capital campaign. I would like to use a flickr badge on our site, but am wondering if anyone has had any problems implementing the badge within a commercial website content management system. We are currently redesigning our website using Ektron CMS400.NET, but I'm not sure if it will work (and won't be able to test it out for about a week). In the meantime, does anyone have any experience with this?

It was a ton of fun exploring these technologies.  However, I have to say I think implementing them in our library is a long shot a best.  My colleagues immediate response to the mention of MySpace or Facebook is that those are already on the way out.  I do think Flikr would be a great place to store our many library and events pictures.  Hopefully I can make some headway there.  MMOGs and Second Life are also viewed very much as belonging to the public library world - not for us.  Still, I get agreement that it is important for us (read good if I do it) to keep up with these trends.  So I'll just have to keep making baby steps.

I love flickr – but mostly for personal reasons.  When it comes to using flickr in my professional life, however, I find its usefulness just slightly limiting, but here are some thoughts anyway.  As discussed in this week’s material, flickr can definitely be used as a training tool and for some information literacy purposes.  I think for the most part, tutorial software would do the job better, especially for database instruction, but I feel flickr would be an excellent tool for showing incoming students the basics of using the library – a photo-tour of the building, how to locate a book/journal and borrow it, how to locate and use the photocopiers, how to use the microfilm machines and print, etc. etc.  Flickr could also be instrumental in creating a sense of “community” around the library – a flickr group to which students, faculty and staff could contribute photos that would be shared through a feed to our website (see what the University of Manitoba is doing with their Virtual Learning Commons – this site will be interesting to Five Weeks folks on so many levels, but scroll down to the bottom for their flickr photo feed).  Besides this, have you searched flickr for photos pertaining to your library?  I have – it’s very enlightening to see what folks find interesting about your library and the dialogue that takes place around these photos.

I’ve been listening and taking in this week all the excitement regarding the social network software MySpace and Facebook. In her blog, Information Wants To Be Free, Meredith states, “A profile that offers nothing but a picture of the library, a blog post or two cutesy thing about how we shush you just looks cheesy. I think there is a big difference between ‘being where our patrons are’ and ‘being useful to our patrons where they are.’ I think some libraries in MySpace and Facebook have put a profile up, but they have not tried to make it useful to their patrons at all. Just putting up a profile does not make the library seem cool, nor does it make the library more visible.” (blog was posted on May 10, 2006)

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)

These links have nothing to do with libraries, and they are a bit old, so you may have seen them. But they are related to this week's theme, and I think they are funny.

First is internet troubadour Jonathan Coulton's video: Flickr.mov. He took unrelated photos from Filckr with Creative Commons licenses and wrote a song to suit the photos. I laugh at this one every time. (Sexually suggestive humor, but no profanity/nudity.)

Next is Demetri Martin in a clip from The Daily Show from about a year ago, Trendspotting: MySpace. My favorite quote: "So what are social networking sites? First of all, if you don’t know, you’re a loser."

Woohoo! The end is near. Everyone is thinking about their proposals and how they can change the world. I mean change your library! Right? Rachel Kinkaid gets the gold star of the week for being the very first to post her proposal. Proposals should be submitted in the format of your choosing with a link or content on the wiki space provided.

This week contained all kinds of fun technologies and some very fact filled presentations. Steve Lawson and Michael Porter started the week off right with their unique personalities and a discussion on Flickr. Second Life and the world of online gaming was revealed to us through the duo of Kelly Czarnecki and Matt Gullet. Lauren Pressley filled our ears with the tale of how we can use Flickr for training and Mathew Stuckings discussed social software initiatives at the National Library of Austrailia. The screencast by Beth Evans discussed her library's very successful venture with MySpace.

I found the presentations this week especially interesting, but don't believe that the technologies would "fly" at my library.  We have so many staff members who are adverse to having their pics posted on our library website, that flickr with its emphasis on photos doesn't seem like a good fit for us.  Except for headshots of three-four staff members who have agreed to having their picture posted with our "Ask a Librarian" feature, the few photos of staff events that we've archived are posted on the staffweb behind a login and deleted within a month or so or distributed via email.  I don't know if folks are just generally "camera shy" or truly don't like the idea of pictures of themselves being available to anyone on the web.  We could post pix of our new building in progress, but we have a live web cam for that which is linked off the main site, so I don't think that flickr will be at the top of our implementation list for technology.

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.