Royce

So May is now over. School starts again as of yesterday. One more year.
And instead of finding myself focusing in on current technology and its use in the library, I find myself reading decades old text on the future of libraries.

So what have I learned?

Library2.0 is nothing new, if anything it is a reiteration of the fundamental mission of libraries: Provide the best possible service to our patrons.

OMNL~~~old message new lesson.

oh yeah, go check out MOG. The perfect site for musicians and music snobs.

So yeah, setting up the myspace isn’t too bad. Our Library account looks okay for now, nothing too spectacular. My one big glaring problem with myspace is finding the account once I set it up.
Even with Google as the search engine for myspace I cannot find anything. Oh, wait, I was able to find my account when I searched for the email I signed up with. I would say something sarcastic but its not really necessary.

Reading a good book right now called Generation Myspace about raising kids who are growing up online. I guess this is the biggest credible argument for embracing Library 2.0, it might not be relevant to US today, but it will be to THEM in a few years that libraries are reaching out to them where they live, work, and play….on the internet. I am just glad that we have moved beyond poorly crafted web pages and into much more user friendly design interfaces.

Next is facebook, which I like, but the only problem there is I will have to sign up as Manhattan Public or Manhattan Library. Maybe I should sign up as Reference Librarian.

Have fun!

Created my first wiki today over at wiki.zoho.com. Relatively painless. Definitely I can see the beauty in the way it forces you to organize. The Library Success Wiki is the wiki (outside of Wikipedia) that I hear the most about….so check it out.

I have been assigned the duty at my library of updating all the computer class training materials.
With 30+ documents to deal with a wiki sounded like a good step. Plus it gets me in the know about the wiki. My goal is to talk my supervisor into creating one for our reference manual.

Which by the way I had a great idea for updating. Just put out a new notebook and the old one. Click them both open and say, “If you think a page from the old one needs to go into the new one than just go ahead and put it in the new one”. Of course you have to deal with the person inclined to put all the pages in the new one. That is where I think you would need to have them initial it.

Ah, library land…..what a place.

So yeah a while ago I really thought IM was something I could just never understand. Who really wanted to be in contact with people that easily?

Oh! How things have changed. Now that I am busier than ever, being able to login and talk with someone at anytime is nice. Nothing prophetic happens, just nice conversation for a bit. Nothing different than walking by someone at work. But a little longer and more real.

My favorite is Google Talk. Maybe because all my bestest of friends have a google account.

However when it comes to being able to get all of my accounts up and going at the same time: Meebo easily wins.

I can see the benefits this IM communication line could provide for a library. Imagine having it on all the reference computers. All points of contact accessing all locations in which librarians are working. A collective communication between the knowledge of all the librarians and the information need of the patron.

I figure libraries and other businesses should really move towards this communication model. Like my wife said to me last night when I was discussing bringing this up at my workplace: “Don’t go pissing your pants if in the end it doesn’t work.”

Quite beautiful words to live by in this 2.0 environment.

My library took the step towards 2.0 today in our reference department with an internal blog. Best of all it was instantly apparent why we should create one for the public to use as well. Plus a couple of people are on board who want to create content, which is not really my strong suit. I love tweaking the interface, but I can quickly run out of stuff to talk about.

Now we just have to figure out what area of the library website we will get to have as our own.

Next is a flickr and a myspace account. Yeah! What a library!

So in my neverending quest to annoy co-workers I have devised yet another method of saving paper in our library.

We usually request course catalogs from all the colleges and universities in the state, and then we make those available to patrons to use. This is a costly waste of paper, especially in an age where most everything is on the internet.

So now hopefully we can just have a handout, or a del.icio.us set, that patrons can use.

If you have done something like this at your library, let me know.

Oh, and quit printing off emails people.