End of the challenge

I think this was a good experience. Most of the tools I was already aware of and used, but it was a good review of the other tools that I did not use as often.

I already subscribe to several of the blogs listed in the final lesson. I think I will probably go through and bookmark the rest of the blogs using Delicious so I do not lose the links. I will go through all of the past lessons and bookmark the links from there as well.

I plan on sharing the information and knowledge I have gained from this challenge where I can with my coworkers. It was a good refresher course that also highlighted different uses for sites and tools that I was already using during my off work time.

Maybe I'll try to get our wiki going again at work. I think I will try to keep my blog going and update it frequently. The possibility of a facebook page for the library sounds fun, but it may take some convincing to get it going.

Well it was fun! Happy holidays!

Wikis

Ah wikis...So intimidating, but so easy to use.
I had to create a wiki for class last fall for several assignments. We used wetpaint.com as our free wiki template. After going through the tutorial, I found it very easy to use. We had to create wikis in groups and submit them as assignments. It was a neat tool, and I saw a lot of potential for use in the library I work in.

My enthusiasm was quickly crushed by those who did not understand wikis and thought they would be a waste of time. There is a lot of fear of blogs and wikis by those who do not care to understand them. They are great ways to communicate and keep all the dialog on a subject in one area.

A coworker of mine has been trying to start an internal wiki for some time. She cannot quite convince the administration of the benefits it would have for staff communication- something we often struggle with.

There are downsides to wikis. We started one after the 2008 SDLA Convention in our department. Communication was great and people were full of ideas, until a member of the administration was invited as a guest on a certain topic. Then no one wanted to comment for fear of what this person might think or say in return. Unless everyone is on board with the idea of the wiki, you cannot force participation. If you do force it, they will not see it as a useful tool, but a tedious task they have to take care of everyday.

I enjoyed the example wikis posted through sdlibrarychallenge. I especially liked the Bull Run Library wiki and the Library Success wikis. They are good examples of use of wikis in a library. I hope to pass them on to my supervisors to inspire them or help accept the importance of wiki use.

Tagging, Folksonomies and Social Bookmarking

I had some experience using Delicious before this lesson. Last Fall I was taking a class and I used Delicious to bookmark all of the information I was finding online. Everything from blogs to news articles to company web sites were saved. It was a good place to keep all my bookmarks open and accessible.

I didn't make use of the tags or folksonomies at the time because I was still new to the site and not aware of the benefits of tagging to retrieve information.

I have to admit I had forgotten about it, but could have used it several times this year as well. I will attempt to use it more, mostly for school.

Our library currently uses a Delicious bookmark for a collection of reader's advisory sites. It was put together by our database/reference librarian. She has received positive feedback from staff across the system and it is a great tool to pull all the miscellaneous top ten lists and reader advisory blogs.

Social networking

I have been using social networking sites for years. I started out with MySpace and Friendster and now I'm addicted to Facebook. Yes, I am one of those sad fools that checks it 2-4 times a day. I love the tools you can use and its a fun way to post pictures and see photos of my friend. I have found a lot of old high school and college classmates through both social networks. I also use it to keep in touch with family members I don't see as much.

Office 2.0

Google Docs was a neat tool to use. I had already saved some documents to the feature through my gmail account and I didn't even know it! I will have to play with it some more to become more familiar and I hope to share it with patrons as I help them from day to day.

podcasts and videos

I checked out podcast.com and signed up for the Dictionary.com podcast. I will see if I can get into it or not.

As for videos, here is one of my favorite librarians:

Flickr

I have been using Photobucket for a while now, so I did not start a flickr account. I like it because its an easy way to share a large amount of photos at once with my family and friends. You can't always send too many photos at once in an email. Its also a good way to free up some space on your hard drive. Here are a few pictures I took at SDLA:

Liz and Karen at SDLA

Cynthia won these glasses at the showing of "The Hollywood Librarian"