Sites 4 Students

I was quite intrigued by all of the free online resources available to students and everyone. I looked at Zoho and Notecentric. What I liked a lot about both of these sites was that you could access these documents and/or presentations from anywhere. This is similar to delicious and has many applications for work groups, students and others. I just think that its great that these kinds of things are available so that people who maybe didn't buy a computer with these types of applications installed can have access to them. The implications for students is obviously huge. I wish there would have been something like notecentric when I was in college. I know it is something I would have utilized. I am going to spend some more time looking at these tools including Zoho meeting. I have a brainstorming team for my church that I meet with once a week and we have instant messaged and set up conference calls when we couldn't physically meet so it would be interesting to see what Zoho meeting had to offer. It is exciting to see how technology is advancing in ways to help us get more done, more efficiently and how there are no geographic boundaries.

Twittering...

Now I have officially twittered! I must say that I am a bit unsure about how this really applies to us here at KRL. Maybe for committees or people working on special projects this may be a useful way to stay in close contact with eachother. I am not that technilogically advanced to get excited about adding Twitter to my cell phone and using this as a major way to stay in touch with people. I can see teens who have nothing better to do with their time becoming quite obsessed with Twitter. Maybe I am just getting older. Ah... c'est la vie.

Facing Facebook

Well, I now feel that I have arrived. I have a Facebook account! It was fun searching for old classmates and browsing the KRL page. I was a little unclear as to how this could be useful for libraries but after reading the article by Meredith Farkas I can see its merits. In a way the wiki is a way of communicating internal information and Facebook is a way to stay in touch within our system and with the public. I think that it really will help personalize the library to our community to see and hear from actual individuals within the library. I thought the idea that Meredith Farkas had about libraries offering classes on My Space and Facebook for parents is an excellent idea!! I think there are a lot of parents out there that want to be informed about how these websites work in order to be able to moniter their kids activity but don't know where to start. I also like how some libraries where using their Facebook account as a way for patrons to place requests for materials. The less paper we have to handle the better! I do agree with Farkas that we need to be intentional about our Facebook page and make it a useful tool for us and our patrons. It seems like our page is working great already!

Posting to the KRL Wiki

I enjoyed exploring the KRL wiki and posting something to the Technical Services Page. I added the mending guidelines to our page. It has been interesting to receive e-mails as others add to the wiki as well. In some ways it would be nice to be able to select which areas of the wiki you would be notified of if they were updated so that you wouldn't be plagued by e-mails constantly. I found the wiki to be very user friendly which was encouraging. I am wondering if this will eventually take the place of our staff webpage? It seems somewhat repetitive to have to maintain and reference both places. I am looking forward to watching the wiki grow and develop. I hope that it will encourage better communication throughout our system and keep us all in better touch.

Exploring the world of the Wiki

I must say that I found the wiki information very interesting. I didn't realize that it could be used for all sorts of things besides a wikkipedia type of resource. I appreciated the screencast on the KRL wikki. It was very informative and well done. I browsed Nancy Pearl's, Book Lust Wiki and found lots of fun things on there. However, when I used France as a search term a lot of my results were people's names. I found the Stevens County Wiki very intriguing. I looked at a book list of books pertaining to the northwest for kids and I loved being able to see the book summary and then click on the title and see if it was available at the library. Brilliant! I am intrigued by the implications that the KRL wiki could have for technical services. We have forms, templates and instructions that we are always editing and referencing. Some of these are strictly for inter department use while others need to be shared files that branches can access but not edit. We will have to explore the possibilities. I am most excited about doing a wiki like Stevens County. I think this would be an excellent way for our patrons to feel more invested in the library by becoming part of an online community. We could also offer information that would simply provide good customer service to our patrons like genre or age specific reading lists. We could even eventually have an RSS feed available for patrons to subscribe to that talks about news connected with the library like fine policies or library events. The possibilities are really endless! I am excited to see how we decide to utilize Wikis at KRL. Back to my corner...