Thing #2

This blogging business feels weird, because: a) is anyone going to read this, other than the "23 things" leaders? b) even if someone else reads it, why clog up the internet when I don't have anything original to say? I feel like by blogging, I'm saying "What I have to say is useful and important" when it's not.

Except that it's useful to me to understand the blogging process, and that's what the "23 things" are all about. So I understand and like the approach. Learning by doing has always been the way to go for me.

It will be useful to understand the tools with which most students are coming into college. As an academic librarian, at minimum, the more I know about how students are using online tools for both research and social networking, the more I can work with my colleagues to meet their needs. For their research, how can we best design access to relevant information? And knowledge of the trends in social networking may lead us to innovative methods to communicate with the students. And perhaps becoming proficient with some of these tools will lead us to find uses for them ourselves, either to communicate with students or even among colleagues.

We should also keep in mind the purpose of our libraries. While I can't speak for public librarians, my guess is that a public library focuses heavily on "what the patrons' want." While the academic library should certainly consider what the patrons want important, our primary mission is educational, to teach and otherwise support the college's curriculum. "What the patrons' want" will go a long way to make the library - as both a physical and online entity - a place students will use and return to. But many students would probably also like to have fewer assignments and more vacations; is that what ultimately leads to the best education? Academic librarians need to think in terms of "what the patron needs" as well as "what the patron wants." The tools of the so-called "library 2.0" may be useful for both.

Thing #1

Thing #1 did not bode well for me, a person who has never desired to either blog or create an avatar. Creating the blog went ok, but the avatar not so much. I was in the middle of creating my avatar - since the female avatars are all way too pretty I designed one with a red union suit and with the head entirely covered with a scuba mask and sunglasses. Yes, I did save it! Then on one of my clicks, an error message appeared saying the Yahoo avatar page was not available. I tried again, and again, went away, came back, went away, came back. Then I tried the ancient version of Internet Explorer on my computer (normally I use Firefox) and got in fine. But Explorer insisted that I had not yet created an avatar! Tried Firefox again - still the error message. Back to Explorer, created new avatar from scratch.

I suppose Yahoo thought my jump-suited scuba diver totally hideous, thus my problem.

People do this for fun?