Thursday, May 3, 2007

Library 2.0 - Amy Benson

Again, folks have beat me to posting notes from the session, but I think I'll weigh in as a heavy user of many of the technologies that Amy described...

Love:

Wikis ... have our library procedure manual on a wiki. When I present at a conference with a group, up goes the wiki. Faculty are totally excited about wikis. I'm a big fan of PBwiki. Simple, fast and incredibly easy to use. And the PBwiki people want to work with us!! You should try it. I also use it to plan vacations when travelling with a group.

Blogs ... For a long time didn't understand the advantages of blogging. I don't have any interest in maintaining a personal blog - why would I put my personal life out there for the world? But then, the marketing possibilities of blogging for our library dawned on me. (I maintain our library's webpage - http://library.mwcc.edu and use Dreamweaver/HTML for that - that's snap ... Why blog??) AHHH ... other people can contribute easily to a blog - much easier than them sending me content and me having to be at my desk to post it. I have a business background (MBA) so I know my job is really something like 75% sales, so anything I can do to open up new communication channels with our users and make my job easier - it's all good!!

RSS feeds - our blog is available as a feed - that's a no brainer

IM - Been using it for 6 years+ for virtual reference. Hope to transition to Meebo this summer. This is another no brainer

YouTube - use video in our library instruction program as much as possible knowing it appeals to millenials who are the bulk of our students (love the wikiality video - have been using it for a year or so - thank goodness Comedy Central put up a legit copy)

Library ELF - use it personally, and have promoted it via our blog

Sitting the fence on :

Second life and MySpace - waiting and seeing how we fit in

Lukewarm on :

Podcasting - I'm 99% sure it's the last thing our students want to be listening to on their MP3 players in their free time. It's hard enough to get them to do their homework or anything outside of class!

I'm extremly enthused about technologies that make our jobs easier and are educationally sound. If it makes life easier and helps them learn - let's go for it! If you want to talk to me about how I use any of these technologies, feel free to email me at hmccann@mwcc.mass.edu

1 comment:

Mat Bose said...

Great blog post Amy, I created a wiki for the small public library that I work at (and use pbwiki). We also have a general library blog, children's blog, and flickr account! These are all great library 2.0 tools, and I also love podcasts as a means to stay current on library trends - Sirsi Dynix/OPAL.