Thing #15 - On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

Thank goodness this was a quick "thing"! The articles were short so I could skim them quickly. "Into a new world Of Librarianship" hit some key points for me. Making our libraries user-centered, not impeding our customers, and being trendspotters are important points for me as a library user. I have been a library customer many more years than I have been a library employee. One of SPL's newer policies has impeded my use of the library and has forced me to go elsewhere for many of my books. (I wonder how this is affecting our circ stats!) Other staff have said they too are using our library less for the same reason. I am referring to having to wait a week to place holds on new materials. This has forced me to either take the time to manage a waiting list of things I want to read (takes too much time), buy my books (getting expensive), or use other libraries (more driving, uses more gas, takes up my time). This takes me away from my library and on to the internet to purchase or download what I want. As for being a trendspotter, I think SPL has done fairly well. We aren't exactly cutting edge, but with our budget constrains I think we do a pretty good job. I think it is important that we do our best to keep up with the latest and greatest or our usage will continue to drop.

Thing #14 - Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

Sigh...once again I am so frustrated because I just don't have the time to complete these assignments to the standards I would like. I have to say again that I am so grateful for the chance to learn something new and I don't want to sound negative, BUT this is turning into a negative experience for me. Because of the time crunch, I feel like we should be spoon fed most of these experiences instead of exploring on our own. You can still learn a lot, get your feet wet, and not feel so pressured to get the next project completed by the end of the week. I have read other blogs, and I am not the only one feeling this way. We could then do the exploring on our own time if we wanted to know more. That said, I played around with Technorati and discovered something else I won't use but am glad to know about. Since the last thing I want to do after work is glue my eyeballs to a computer screen, this just does not interest me. I do not want to read blogs in my spare time. I want to read books. I absolutely positively DO NOT want to claim my blog. I am only writing it because I have to to take part in this learning process. I certainly hope no one is actually reading it.

Thing #13 - Tagging, folksonomies & social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

I can see a lot of uses for Del.icio.us in the library setting, especially for those of us that work on reference desks. As for personal use, I think I will continue to keep my bookmarks on my own computer. I have a Del.icio.us account that I created after Staff Day. I got really excited about it, but none of my friends were using it so my interest died. Maybe someday when I have a bit more time I will give it a go again.

Thing #12 - Roll Your Own Search Engine

Here is a link to my personal search engine: http://rollyo.com/techgirlwannabe/tech_sites/. Take a look and please let me know if you have a favorite tech site that I might enjoy.

Thing #11 - LibraryThing

Please feel free to visit my personal library @ http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Techgirlwannabe

This is not something I will use, but it is nice to know about. I appreciate the time and opportunity to learn new things even if I don't think I will personally use it in my daily life.

Thing #10 - Play around with image generators

Not much time again this week so my image is not very exciting. It will have to do!

Thing #9 - Finding Feeds

I have spent way too much time today looking at the various feed search tools. I am like a kid in a candy store, and I need to get back to work. I explored all of the feeds suggested in the exercise, and I really liked Bloglines and Feedster the best. They seemed to be the easiest for me to search. Syndic8 was the most confusing for me. I'm not sure if it was because it was at the end of my discovery exercise and I was getting tired, or if it was just too much information presented in a format that was not pleasing to me. At any rate, when/if I need to look for newsfeeds I know where to go, and if I see the feed icon on a website that I regularly visit I know how to subscribe to it. This was the week I was most looking forward to and I learned a lot!