The end of “23 Things” – iHCPL Week 10 #23
When I publish this post, I will have completed HCPL’s 23 Things program, a learning experience about Library 2.0.
On a whole, I’ve enjoyed this experience. It’s always nice to get to play around with cool stuff on the Internet while on company time. And it’s forced me to check out some things I probably wouldn’t have bothered looking into (like the Flickr tools and avatars and such).
I think that for me, the thing I really got out of this program is more knowledge of myself. I’ve learned that I’m quite the skeptic when it comes to new technology (and to think I consider myself a technophile!). I think new technologies are cool, but when it comes to the practicality of them and their application in my work and personal life, I’m quite unenthusiastic. I suppose I have a problem with adopting technology just for technology’s sake.
Some of the things I like (Flickr, for one) I doubt I would actually use. Most of my pictures are of my children and since I know about all the creepy creepertons trolling the Internet for cute kids to prey upon, I’m less than enthusiastic about openly posting my children’s photos online. Instead, I’ll stick with a service like Shutterfly, which allows me to share my photo albums with people I invite, rather than sharing them with the whole world.
I also like Wikis for certain purposes: a quick and dirty way of getting some basic information about any topic in the world. You wanna know about Vincent Van Gogh? Got it covered. Your geeky friend making reference to Replicators that don’t make any sense to you? You can find out all about ‘em. But don’t even bother coming to me at the reference desk needing help on citing an article from Wikipedia in your research paper. All I’m going to do is give you a stern talking-to about doing proper research and using valid research sources and such. I might even put my hair into a bun and glare at you over my glasses as I adjust my pearls and roll up the sleeves of my sweater set in my fiercest librarian posture.
Anyhoo, all in all this has been a great experience that I am thankful for having. I’m hoping to continue the journey by keeping up with some of the blogs I’ve found and continuing to explore new technologies. Hopefully I’ll find a few I like and find good uses for them too!
Stay tuned – I’ll keep posting on my continuing journey for all who care to keep up with me!
Toodle-oo!
