Week 9, Thing 23

Whew! I did think at one point that I might not make it this far!
I learned something from each of the exercises, but I personally won't use some of them. Social networking "for me" is accomplished face-to-face with people in the same room. I know that is an old-fashioned point of view, but I never have liked the idea of sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end. However,I know that today's teens and young people are different, and libraries need to know how they relate and how they communicate, in order to be relevant to them.

There were times in the process of working through the 23 things when the thought flitted across my mind that other staff people must have a lot more time to play on the Internet that I do. I found it hard to set aside time to work on this with so many other pressing duties, and customers to wait on. It's difficult at a branch location to manage an uninterrupted time to work on any project, including this one.(I can't speak to the challenges at ML since I've never worked there.)
If you do something like this again, I would allocate more time to the staff to work on it. Some of the exercises were definitely more challenging for me. I caught myself thinking, "I don't have time for this!!" However, I am glad to have done it. Now I know a little bit about each of the 23 things. I do like learning new things, but this program sort of forced me to learn things I normally wouldn't have taken time for. I hate to sound mercenary, but having a decent incentive, and being able to do a lot of the exercises on work time were big motivators. Just in case you missed my choice of incentives, it's the MP3 player!
I'm surprised with some things I found and like--Wikis, Web-based productivity tools, LibraryThing, Flickr. I can see that I would use these. Other things, like Podcasts and RSS, and even blogs have potential for library uses.
All in all, I think this was a great way to get staff to try some new things. I wish I had had more time to play with some of the applications. I'd like to have time to get more comfortable with the ones I've listed above, and perhaps I will at some point. I think this was a great concept, and I'm thankful to the O! What a Geek team for setting these lessons up. It was a worthwhile project! Thanks.