Monday, June 18, 2007

GRAND FINALE!!
I've learnt about a wide range of new technologies that I just didn't have an inking about, especially as I don't have a computer at home. I'm sure even if there are technologies that I wouldn't want to personally use that it is very useful to know what younger and/or more tech savvy people out their in the community are using and how these technologies are being deployed socially.
It has been important to see how other libraries are using Library 2.0 technologies and I now have the tools to keep up a bit at least!
I wonder whether we will need to think about keeping our less tech savvy students and academic staff comfortable depending on which way the library goes with implementing Library 2.0 stuff. Perhaps a couple of the Library promotion series next year could be devoted to some of this. Maybe another mini library marketing campaign?

I am finding it a bit difficult to sieve out the Library 2.0 stuff that I think will be useful from stuff that I don't find appealing. For instance, my basic reaction to Second Life is pretty negative but there are other tools that are going to be terrific. I think wikis for different projects within the library for staff to communicate will be very useful. It would be fun and probably useful to be able to exchange favourite websites.

I do find it difficult to think of how some of this new technology and how we use it compares to serious research. How much are we falling into the same kind of trap of the Catholic Church making the mass more 'relevant' and in fact just pandering and making it more banal.
There is definately aspects we can use...

I like how sites like Amazon give you other suggestions for books that might interest you. I wonder if our catalogue will be able to do that. I also think it can be most helpful to have a record of the history of your searches easily visible.

It would probably be good if Julia and Lyn could do something through the Teaching and Learning Forum to have some discussions vs library staff and academics re some of the Library 2.0 stuff.

I do think stretching the course out a bit will make it easier to have enough time to get to the really important bit which is how we are going to use the technologies here at ECU. For some of the sessions it took a long time to actually get through looking at and experimenting with things that there wasn't enough time to really thoughtfully have ideas about whether/how to implement it here. I would have liked to have taken more time to have looked at other people's blogs on the project, but really didn't have enough time.

Having said that I want to thank Dan Julia and Lyn for the opportunity to have participated in this project. There have been times when I probably should have been attending to far more boring work but got way laid by some Project 23 Things because it was different and fun!

There will need to be a project group at the end of the roll out to work out what we are going to implement and how.

I would like to see a Library blog (I don't want to get involved in subject specific blogs) start up next year. I think we should consider wikis for library projects. I think we need to think about doing some podcasts audio and visual for info lit. Perhaps we should think about trying to do one next year for Finding Resources for External etc students.

I wonder whether students could set up libraries of their favorite books to act as "reading lists' for other students - I guess they may use their own tagging? Is it worth asking students to tag books with the e-book experiment of David's? (Not sure where this would lead - I wonder whether students can be lead to the advantages of library and database subject headings when they see the messes that can result with non consistent language!)

Running out of steam...

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