Weeks 7 and 8

Well I finished the Web 2.0 workshop. Many thanks to Caitlin and Matt for putting this together. I don't think I would change anything except maybe add a section on Twitter. The thing I absolutely knew nothing about before I started was blogging. And I now can not only blog but have added a slideshow to my blog. That was exciting. I also enjoyed the Commoncraft videos and may use them myself sometime.

My favourite Flickr set

Week 6

Well I already had a Facebook account but I hadn't opened it in a while. Had two friends waiting for me to acknowledge them. I visited the OPl fan site and saw a posting by someone who congratulated us on being on Facebook but pointed out that if we are advertising ourself as the largest bilingual English/French library in North America our profile should be bilingual. A very astute comment.

I liked the Brooklyn Museum fan site a lot. I can see that there is a lot of scope for using Facebook to promote library events and publications. What about the covers to some new books every week. We could even post some Infoguides. But, like all of the new technologies, you have to have the time to keep it up to date or it can be a negative rather that positive attribute.

Week 5

Well, this week was Social Bookmarking. I had a problem playing the video and had to resort to changing browsers to hear it. Don't know why. I already have a delicious account but haven't updated for a while. I did however, for the first time, add someone to my network. I added Alexandra since she posted her Delicious address in comments. Thanks Alexandra if you're reading.

In my Saturday's How to Really Find Information workshop, when I was trying to close the training room, one of my students wanted to show another student how to use Mango. She was really enthusiastic. Of course, I let her, but I was surprised that she knew about and had used it. So I asked her and she said she saw a poster on the first floor. Proof positive that advertising works and that one of the biggest problems with the nonuse of our databases is that we do not advertise them. If anyone has any good ideas on how they can advertise the databases, please do it. I feel we might lose some of our databases because they are not used enough. Particularly Learning Express which has TOEFL books and practice which people are always asking for.

Two examples of advertising that we are doing or planning to do at Main Reference. We now give a workshop called Have You Used Library PressDisplay? I think it does help to increase the awareness of this resource. Also we are planning to create email signatures to attach to some of our reference email answers. Every little bit helps.