I thought this was a great program. First, it created a dialogue between staff members about the library and the future and our place in both. I think it created excitement and interest among staff members who perhaps were reluctant to explore some aspects of the rapidly changing web. I know that it hooked me into some new technologies and web-related offerings that I was ignorant of. I feel like I'm more conversant in the technology and better prepared to answer questions and help patrons who are using these tools.
I've always been a believer in life-long learning, but sometimes things are happening so fast at the library that I haven't applied this belief to my work. My days tend to be really busy, so even when people were asking for information about MySpace or others, I didn't have time to spend researching and learning. This program created an at-work opportunity to explore and learn.
I enjoyed many of the exercises and discoveries that we were encouraged to do. It's hard to come up with favorites, because I was intrigued by so much, but I'm now a regular user of flickr, rss and Library Thing. The things I think I'll be using shortly are the online software, a personal blog and just lots more exploration. One thing this program taught me is how fast innovation happens on the web and how lightly we have scraped the surface. I want to see more!
I would love to see KCLS provide more learning opportunities like this one. As a staff member without a professional degree, I really enjoyed exploring the business of libraries at a completely different level than I do in my day-to-day work. I would definitely recommend this program to all staff. I'd certainly do it again!
No comments:
Post a Comment