Week 1 #1 Blogs

Read the first entry in this Blog.
Now that you’ve done some exploring around this website and understand how this program will work, it’s time to set up your very own personal blog to begin recording your thoughts, discoveries, and exercises. For this program, you may use any one of several free online blog hosting services including Blogger, Wordpress, or Typepad. (Although we are recommending Blogger, you may find another preferred blog service.)

Grab yourself a blog in 3 steps:
1. Create an account Google asks you for an email address - this becomes your username.Note:You do not need a Gmail account.
Remember to write down your Username and Password.
2. Name your blogRemember that the whole web world can see your blog title and blog address. You probably don’t want to use your real name. Consider creating a blog name that’s anonymous, yet uniquely you. The URL for your blog will look like these examples - http://librarywriting.blogspot.com/ or http://preilly.wordpress.com/ or http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/ (these are real blogs so of course you need to give your own blog its own unique name.) The format is name.blogspot.com when you use blogger.com software. Note: There is no www in the address when using Blogger.com software. Please remember your URL address and/or bookmark it.The 23 Things moderator recommends: You are urged to use a name or "handle" as follows: [ [FIRST NAME or NICKNAME]Library2 -- for example, http://hiphoplibrary2.blogspot.com/
3. Select your template.Blogger has several templates - have fun choosing one for you! If you run into problems, check out Blogger's Help file and Tutorial or ask your 23 Things moderator .

Discovery Exercise:
1. Set up a blog for yourself through Blogger.
2. Play around and add a test post or two.
3. You will create a discovery post for each of the ’23 Things.’

Please clearly label each entry in your blog in the following way:
Week 1, Exercise or Thing #1, subject. Each of your posts should provide insights into what you’ve discovered and learned. Feel free to share what worked for you … and what didn’t … what surprised you … what frustrated you … what amazed you. For example: Your ‘Thing 2’ post will talk about which habit among the 7 and 1/2 lifelong learning habits is easiest and which is hardest for you & why.
TIP: This is a good time to "bookmark" your blog for easy access throughout the course.

Welcome to Kim's Library Blog : 23 things

Welcome to Kim's Library Blog
HAVELOCK NORTH LIBRARY BLOG
This blog is a web 2.0 self paced development tool. You do as
little or as much as you wish each week.
I was inspired by Paul Reynolds after attending a
Web 2.0 session of his at Library Conference in
Rotorua September 2007.
In conjunction with "23 things @ Central" they allowed
me to source some ideas & content for my blog.

Kim Salamonson
Blog Master

Welcome to Kim's Library Blog

Welcome to My Blog.
It is my aim to provide some straight forward easy help for Librarians to use Web 2.0 resources.
On the following pages, you will encounter the tools of the new Internet: Web 2.0 tools that are bringing our kids in touch with the entire world through social networking, video, audio, and gaming sites. Tools that our customers are wanting use and tools we can use to attract customers and keep in touch with our customers.
For this tutorial, there are 23 Things for you to do. Each Thing will show you one more web tool. There are many places for you to explore, experiment with, and think about creative ways to use this in your library. There is no deadline and this course will remain online through the 2007-2008 and longer. Work at your own pace and enjoy.
Help sheets available on request email the webmaster.

Why Should I learn new technology? Is it for Libraries?

Why should I learn about that when I’m busy with other stuff?, I concluded that if library staff are going to trade a couple of hours a week to learn about emerging technologies that they can’t even use yet in their jobs, then there better be some compelling reasons for it. With items to catalogue, instructional material to write, users to help, budgets to balance, outreach to plan and systems to troubleshoot, why is it good management for staff to be released from these tasks to spend some time learning about emerging technologies? Here’s my list. I’d love to know what’s on yours.
1. Core business. Our core business is linking information and people. There are new and better ways to do this and we need to know how.
2. Productvity. All of the tasks listed above can be made easier using emerging technologies, but you need to know how to use them.
3. Understanding all formats. Users will ask us about these information sources. Are we serving them well if we say “sorry I only know about information in some formats?”
4. Trend watching. Tools are constantly evolving and changing. What starts as a seemingly pointless diversion can become a potent information source when it reaches critical mass or people discover a new use for it. (eg. twitter). We need to be there watching this and understanding it
5. Our skills are useful. Tagging, metadata, data-mining, indexing - new technologies need our skills.
6. Experimenting gains skills. It’s like Solitaire when Windows first came out. People needed to learn how to use the mouse interface - and this was the fastest, most efficient way to educate the workforce. Some seemingly pointless sites (yes, I’m looking at you boomshine, and you, Second Life) teach us new interfaces.
7. Dealing with vendors. If we don’t know what can be done, for free, using new tools, then library software vendors can continue to sell us “solutions” that are inflexible and costly.
8. Being prepared. What a few early adopters are using now, others will use in 18 months.
9. Core concerns being redefined. The definitions of some core concerns of librarianship are being re-negotiated - copyright, plagiarism, scholarship, authority, privacy and recreation. We need to be in among the conversations on sites where this is happening.
10. Manage our workforce. We need young, tech-savvy, passionate, clever library staff to deal with the changes, and we need to know enough to manage these people and get the best out of their new skills.
11. Fun. If staff are given permission to have fun and be creative as they learn in a supportive environment, it can lift workplace morale.
12. Better service. If we know how, we can offer better service to our users, where they are and using their preferred tools. (eg. SMS output of item location records to their mobile device via wireless)
13. So we can tell the IT dept what we want. If we feel overwhelmed by web-based technologies that are now only available in beta, imagine how it feels if your job has been to set up software, protect a network and standardise operating environments. If we have a centralisedl IT department, then we may have to know more about the tools we want to use (eg. software we’d like for an internal blog).
14. Our users are required to keep up. In academic and special libraries, our users are required by our organization to keep up to date with technology in their fields. To support them, we need to know what that is.
15. International perspective. Your network of professional contacts does not have to be restricted to your own country. New tools make “communities of interest” easier to form. (Thanks to Darren Draper for the last two).
16. Finding out what other libraries are doing. Printed journals and conferences are no longer the best way to find out about the successes and failures in other libraries. With blogs, wikis, podcasts - all harnessed into your aggregator via a subject search, you can keep up and have an avenue to discuss these things with professional colleagues.
17. Standards are different. The tools we will use from now on aren’t standards like AACR2 and LCSH. The best tool for the job shifts and changes daily with our users’ needs. We need to learn general flexibility and skills to adapt to this. Skills like how to register at a social software site, how comments culture works on blogs, how to assess Open Source software, how to tweak templates and products to fit our library.
18. Can’t predict the future, so need to experiment. Without crystal balls, we don’t know for sure what will be widely used. We need to try and assess many services to find what works for our users.
19. Crowds are fickle. Good quality tools with easy user interfaces may not be favoured over early established tools with a critical mass of users…and the crowd may switch. This happened when a mass of people migrated from bloglines to Google reader as their preferred aggregator. Today’s unused startup may be the Next Big Thing.
20. Better collaboration Libraries have a culture of sharing resources and ideas with each other. Emerging technologies enhance this.