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.

Week 3 and 4

Last week was very busy so I am combining the two weeks in one.

Wikis - I must say that I have used wikis before so I didn't really learn anything new although some of the wikis mentioned were new to me. It does seem though that the LisWiki does not have that much in it. Library Success is somewhat interesting but I'm not sure how regularly it is updated.

RSS Feeds - I am also somewhat familiar with RSS feeds because I use iGoogle as my home page. I find that I rarely even look at my RSS feeds and that at the moment 10 feeds seemed an awful lot. I finally made it but time will tell if I find the Reader easier to use than iGoogle. I still like receiving emails that I can ignore or not. .

I don't have anything terribly interesting this week except finding out that AncestryLibrary now has the Civil Service lists from 1872-1900. Do you know that in 1900 there were two librarians working for the Library of Parliament, the Parliamentary Librarian and a General Librarian. The both made the same salary, $3,200 per year. That's it for now.

Week Two of 23 Things

So I just finished listening to the Lifelong learning tutorial and I am supposed to comment on which of the habits of lifelong learners I find the hardest and which I find the easiest. I think the hardest one for me is the first one of Begin with the end in mind. When it comes to learning I find it hard to think about what I really want to do and make a plan. I much prefer coming across learning opportunities serendipitously. Most of the other habits come fairly easily to me. I do have confidence in my ability to learn and enjoy working on challenges and I certainly like to share what I have learned with others and playing with new technologies and skills. However even though View problems as challenges is easy for me in some aspects, one aspect which I find difficult to overcome is the finding time to pursue my learning goals. I guess that's it for the tutorial

I just wanted to mention to anyone else who is interested that my favourite newsletter writer on internet and searching (Tara Calishain) is back doing what she does best although she is not actually sending out the newsletters anymore but is back to updating her website. So unless she finds a new way of sending our newsletters, I will probably have to switch from reading her newsletter to subscribing to an RSS feed or, her new technology is now Twittering. Another new learning opportunity. Learn to twitter. Her website is www.researchbuzz.org for those of you who don't know it.

My first week on 23 things

I find it interesting that although most of this first week of 23 things included things I've already done, not everything went exactly as planned and I had to improvise. For example I had problems listening to the Caitlin's introductory comments and had to go out and come back in again. I think it makes me more aware of what my beginning computer students face. I'm looking forward to more challenges one of which will be contributing to a blog regularly which is something I have never done before.