Monday, October 6, 2008

Exercise 23

Well here we are at exercise 23- the end - but also in many ways the beginning! 23 Things has been fun- an interesting programme with many exercises that I would like to revisit. I loved Flickr, RSS feeds, & LibraryThing. Technorati I can live without!

I think the most important thing about the whole programme though, is not any one individual exercise, but the fact that it has opened my eyes to the possibilities offered by Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. It has also reinforced the fact that we can never stop learning, the pace of change is accelerating and the future is exciting.

For many of the exercises I gave myself a time limit - just so that I would actually get the programme completed. Now that it is over, I'm looking forward to revisiting a lot of the applications and exploring further.

Finally, a big thank you to the NSL 23 Things co-ordinators - your patience & enthuasiasm were contagious and certainly kept me motivated!

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Exercise 22

The best example I found of libraries using social networking in a creative way is the National Library of New Zealand's page on MySpace:
www.myspace.com/beheardforever
The creation of this MySpace page is a novel attempt by the National Library to raise awareness among musicians of New Zealand's legal deposit obligations and the provision of quality cataloguing and storage for their work. This is a genuine and valuable example of how social networking sites can be used in a positive and practical way.

However, I felt that most of the other MySpace pages that libraries have set up are vapid and trivial and just seem to be trying too hard. To really engage with young people we need to offer some real content. Library users are quick to distinguish real value from surface gloss, however trendily it is dressed up.