Why should we spend what little time we have learning this stuff??

Have you understood yet why we’re spending some of the time we have at work, during one of the busiest times of the year, on this program? Are you feeling that there’s nothing really here for you? Have you thought that we should just hand you a manual and let you refer to it when you need it?

This was a statewide program. MAPLA was behind pushing it to the state so they must have seen something about the program that was worth

• trying to get most library systems in the state involved and
• allowing library staff across the state to spend work time on the program for several months.  

Do you understand that ”something” that they saw yet?

Here are some of the reasons I’ve discovered. Have you read about other reasons or come to them on your own? Please add your comments to this post whether you agree with me (or the program) or not!

1) This program encourages an exploration of “web 2.0″ technologies. These may not be things you are interested in using for yourself and you may not even see the point of using them. But some of our customers *are* using these tools and we should at least know about them when our customers mention them. We also need to begin to figure out how libraries might use these technologies to interact with our customers, now and in the future if we want to remain relevant.

Remember that customers coming into the library don’t really know or care whether you are a librarian or a circulation staff member. They’ll ask anyone a question! Personally and professionally, this learning is good for all staff members.

2) This program hopes to provide staff with new tools (that are freely available on the Internet) to better support BCPL’s mission.

This program is not *just* about learning about new technology.

1) This program rewards staff for taking the initiative to complete 23 self-discovery exercises.

2) This program is about discovering about the change in the way people are communicating. The whole library 2.0 thing is about the changes in the way library staff and customers interact, in the way customers want to participate in their library experience. In the last few years customers have begun to 

• add comments to blogs,
• write reviews of materials,
• have information come to them via RSS feeds (you could be notified when your favorite genre or author has a new title added to our catalog), and
• have information available via “mashups” (for instance maybe library catalog information could be available in FaceBook or MySpace – places we *know* our customers are spending a great deal of time!)

3) This program gives our staff the time to gain confidence in learning new skills. I’ve heard over and over again how surprised and pleased they are that they could do something they never in a million years would have thought they could do! They’re proud of their accomplishments and enjoy showing off their new skills to their family and friends! This will carry over into their work and BCPL and our customers will benefit more than we ever expected.

4) This program has encouraged teamwork between our staff members. People of different knowledge and skill levels are helping each other to work through the program. It happens across different job levels and age levels. I’ve even seen people from different branches working together. When people help each other to learn they solidify their own learning and will retain it better.

5) Most importantly this program teaches us that library 2.0 is about a shift in the culture and philosophy of our customers and how libraries are shifting their services to meet the changes that we’re learning about in this program. Libraries need to remain relevant to their customers needs.

Oh, yeah. Parts of it are fun, too. Kind of cool that we can have fun at work!

 So … I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … if you’re just learning about the technology in this course, you’re missing the most important part.

Week 6, Thing 13: Tagging and Del.icio.us

I found this good explanation of the difference between tagging and categories.

Aaron Brazell says in his post “Tag, Your it! Leveraging Tagging for your blog,” that categories are structured and tags are unstructured.

“The main difference between categories and tags is the way they organize content. Categories use the “tree” style concept that is probably the easiest to envision. You may have a series of categories such as “News”, “Music”, “Tech” with subcategories nested under those categories. The News category might have subcategories like “Politics”, “Main Stream Media”, and “Iraq” and the Music category might have subcategories like “Melbourne Bands” or “CD Reviews”.

In this way, content is organized in a structural way. Every entry has a bucket to go in and in this way, content can be easily maintained.

However, tagging provides more of a granular way of organizing content and it follows more of a “brain storage” approach.”

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/27/tag-youre-it-leveraging-tagging-for-your-blog/

The tutorial for De.li.cious is pretty good – it tells me exactly how to use it to my advantage. I’ll try her directions for greenhouse gardening, colonial genealogy and maybe for my trip to Europe this fall. And of course for Library 2.0.