Library 2.0

When the Internet first appeared in the mainstream of public life, I recall the near-panic that we in the library profession felt about the need to stay relevant amidst the dire predictions of the death of the library. How amazing then that our public libraries have in fact become even busier, more vibrant social places. Instead of the predicted death of libraries, what we are now facing is the challenge of finding enough new blood to follow us into the profession.

And new blood indeed is what we seek. "People people" who relish change and challenge, who embrace new technologies and who understand the changing needs and expectations of our community. We're up for a challenge alright! Not only to recruit these people, but even more importantly, to help and nurture our existing staff to develop and grow to meet these changing needs.

That's where this Learning 2.0 program is so terrific. It's been really mind opening and enlightening. It makes the future of libraries and 2.0 something that is exciting rather than terrifying (well ok, it's still pretty terrifying...). The possibilities for reaching out to the user, in their space not ours, seem so much more attainable now. It's something we've known for a long time that needs to be aimed for, that we've talked about for years... will it actually start to happen?

Wow! What an opportunity - how many other jobs offer "old fogies" like us the chance to learn, catch up and be involved with social networking like this? We just have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

(PS, I don't think my last pinging attempt with Technorati did a thing. Sigh)

Hmmm...

Not so sure that I got it right last time with the ping thing. For a start, I realised that I didn't have my html link done correctly - had an extra ] that shouldn't have been there. Have amended it, pinged again - let's see what happens, if anything.

ping-a-ling

Well, I put the HTML link for "learning 2.0" into my last post. Then did the ping thing (how exciting.. I've never pinged anything before... except for ants crawling up my arm). It says it could take up to an hour to be added to Technorati. I spent several minutes gazing at the scrolling new posts in the hope that I may witness myself becoming famous, but so far, nothing. Oh well. Not sure if I'll ever know how successful my feeble attempts have been.

Technorati

Feeling guilty about my lack of learning 2.0 time, so pinching a bit of Sunday time to take a peek at the next thing on the list...Technorati. I can't see myself using this much, although I can see the value of the search function if blogs are your thing. I wonder how many people would cotton on to the advanced search options? Over 9,000 results for the blog posts is a lot compared to the 800-odd tag and directory searches.

I guess it really rams home to me how old and out of touch I am! Had a look at some of the popular things on Technorati - the top searches etc. Took me a while to figure out what on earth adam4adam was!!!! I'm now just a little bit savvier. So it could be a good way to have a quick peek what's "happening" out there in the weird world of today and catch up a bit.

I'm going to have a go at adding a tag to this post - see if I can handle the challenge. Hmmm. Here we go:

learning 2.0

Del.icio.us revisited

It's been so long since I last found time to look at my 2.0, that I really felt the need to re-cap on del.icio.us. This time I signed up and added my toolbar button - easy as pie. Then I watched the video again and it all made brilliant sense having just done the exercise. I reckon I could get to like this.....

A Del.icio.us Dip

Just touched on Del.icio.us today...my first peek. I guess I'd have to put it more to the test to really get a grip on it, but, as with Rollyo, I like the idea of having bookmarks that are not attached to an individual PC. I also quite like the social feature of Del.icio.us...for some reason there's something rather nice about knowing that others share an interest in the same thing. I'm beginning to understand the connectedness that web 2.0 can offer.

Hooked on Rollyo

Now, this is more my thing. Very nifty, and easy as well. What a great idea. And as you can see (look right), I was able to add it to my blog without a hitch (now that I've had the practice with the page elements thing).

I like the idea of uploading my bookmarks, which I may do one day when I have once again built up a decent list. You know how it is when you get a new computer...things like favourites seem to disappear into the ether, which is probably not a bad thing come to think about it. It forces you to keep them fresh..instant weeding!

What would we do without a mate from the bush?

After my failure last week to add my Library Thing widget, today I am celebrating because I have done it. Thanks to my buddy at work who told me I just needed to add a page element in the template section, which wasn't intuitive to a techno-phobe like me. Thanks Bushblog!