Thing 30

What a great series of trainings! I can't clap my hands loud enough in recognition of all the hard work that went into pulling all of this together for the enrichment of all participating VBPL staff... Kudos.

While I was previously aware of many of the sites and tools that we explored in this training, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were many "things" that I was either completely unaware of or did not know the full potential of. Marrying these discovery exercises to library related services and concepts really brings them home for me in ways that looking at them for their own sake could not. I especially liked the pointed questions and discussion starters that helped me to focus my thoughts around how these new tools and gadgets could really make a difference in the way we do business here in library land. It is easy to become mired in the "this is how we have always done it" philosophical swamp, and these exercises were a great way of breaking out of that mold.

Finally, I especially enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the program, allowing and even encouraging staff to work through problems together for the benefit of all. It is my sincere hope that this strengthened spirit of teamwork and cooperation will continue to grow from this experience and will help an already wonderfully productive staff to work together even more smoothly in the future.

Wikiworld

Wikis, in my humble opinion, are cool as all get out... I love that you can so easily create and maintain a web space that can be used collaboratively with others. The possibilities for their usefulness are wide and really only limited by our own imaginations, especially in the library setting. Obviously the examples shown in this exercise provide a good cross sampling of some of these many uses, and highlight the ways in which wikis can be used as collaborative tools to enhance productivity and enrich library services. I particularly like the Princeton RA wiki and the Library Success wiki because they are wonderful examples of this collaborative spirit at work.

In the Library Success wiki, we as librarians find both a portal for exploring what others in the profession find works well for them, and a forum for contributing to that discussion as well. Similarly, the Princeton RA wiki provides a space for that community to share their reading suggestions and to link to library materials and services in unique ways. Both wikis require passwords to edit content as well, so there is a fair degree of control over the content that is included on their site. I am excited that we have begun to use wikis for our system, even if they are still kind of unofficial from what I understand, and look forward to reaping the rewards of the collaborative interaction that they offer.

I'm into IM

Before I began my graduate studies, I was ambivalent about IM and its uses. Since then, I have come to appreciate the spontaneity that IM affords users, allowing them to communicate thoughts and ideas in a much more interactive manner than is possible with email. I have had many opportunities to text chat and IM with classmates and friends who are hundreds of miles away, and I have to say that this technology has made cooperative, synchronous learning not only possible but exciting as well. The ability for several participants to bounce ideas off one another in real time can greatly enhance cohesiveness and productivity. On the other hand, because the technology is so ubiquitous, it can sometimes be a distraction to accomplishing other work. Like all technology, it is definitely important to balance your immersion in IM with other work, and means of socialization. Done correctly, IM is one of the most productive ways to communicate thoughts and ideas quickly and collaboratively. It is exciting to think of ways in which libraries can begin to more fully utilize that potential in our everyday work.

Lifelong Learning Habits

The lifelong learning video really reaffirmed my natural inclination towards lifelong learning. Whether I am consciously pursuing knowledge for its own sake, or simply being curious, I am most at home when learning new things. Sometimes this takes the form of concentrated study, sometimes it is a much more casual process. In either case, the easiest and hardest of the 7 and 1/2 habits seem to remain more or less the same for me:

Easiest to overcome- View problems as challenges... this is never an issue for me, since the problem is often the thing that spurs my desire to learn something. If I have trouble with a concept or tool, leaving quantum physics aside, I go out of my way to find out more about what causes the problem and how I can overcome it.

Hardest to overcome- Begin with the end in mind... In some cases this is not so much of an issue, but in others it can bog me down in my learning process. If I am clear about my end goal, I usually have no problem following through with the steps that will carry me there. However, many times I seek knowledge with little idea of what it goal it will ultimately help me achieve. I don't believe that learning for its own sake is necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to a head full of arcane knowledge with no useful outlet.