Last reflections.
When I found out about this class, I was pretty eager to sign up. I had regularly read Meredith's blog, and this class felt like my one chance to take a class with "celebrity" faculty. (I'll ask for your autograph later.) In October, I had suffered a "crisis of faith" of sorts at the CLA conference in Long Beach. After great presentations by guys like Craig Newmark (the Craig in Craigslist,) and social media expert Shel Israel, the naive questions that followed by the well-seasoned professionals in the audience surprised me in their obtuseness. Israel and Newmark were describing the impact and depth social media has on the world as it is today, and a room full of long-in-the-tooth information professionals didn't get it at all. I seriously wondered if the library world was the right place for me. But, thankfully, there are people like our professor here making a distinct impact in the library world and moving the profession toward the real 21st century. (As opposed to some theortical 21st century that has yet to show up.) Social media is real, it is here now and it has fundamentally changed how we connect with each other and gather and share information. This class has been a great introduction to the practical applications of these tools.
I had already considered myself fairly familiar with a lot of the tools discussed, but I didn't quite realize how integrated they already are with our daily lives. I rely on these tools even more than I thought. It is also not so hard to learn new ones, or to introduce people to them. There really is not a great barrier in accessing or understanding these tools. Really, anyone can use them. For my own personal use, like others have said, RSS is the most essential to me. I use Google Reader daily. More than email, more than web browsing, more than television and radio, RSS is how I find out what is going on in the world. (But not more than the newspaper. I'm a long-time daily newspaper reader--the newspaper hasn't been replaced for me. Yet.) Professionaly, I think tagging will have the most impact. Tagging is a great, dynamic way to organize and assess information. I think its potential has only been scratched at the surface right now. I just started as a YA librarian (yay, me!) and the librarything tags have been most essential for me to get a quick understanding of our YA items. As tagging becomes more widespread and professionaly accepted, its going to totally change the way we do our jobs.
Also, like others have said, I would have liked more time to comment on posts, and more use of the bookmarks. I don't know if we really took advantage of the resources we were sharing. Drupal was much better for me than Blackboard. Finding old items and keeping track of threads was easy. And being able to keep track of the class through RSS was just fantastic. It was also interesting to see the occasional comment from someone outside the class. This was a very open and transparent class, just the exact sort of environment that social media creates.
So, yes, this class was great. There is a real use for these tools in the library today and in the years to come. The class provides the skill to recognize and accept the fundamental changes that social media has made in our lives. And it was fun, too.
