Looking back

I have enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. Somehow I thought it would be boring but that certainly wasn't the case. My favorite parts were flickr, image generators, you tube and the play week. I certainly found a lot of fun stuff out there that I didn't know existed. Hopefully I also found some things which will help me on the job.

The biggest problem was finding time to go through all of the lessons. I did some of it at work and our director certainly encouraged us and was willing for all of us to do all of it at work. But in practicality some weeks there is no time at work. Many lessons I did totally at home others I did partly at home. But I had two weeks at home where I had no time and that put me behind. When I was behind I felt pressured and I know that is my fault. However if you do it again it would be nice to have smaller lessons or maybe give two weeks on each lesson. A lot of people seem to have dropped out along the way and I think if there wasn't as much to do each week maybe they would have been able to stick with it. It was just so hard to catch up if you did miss a week or more.

I would try it again if it was done again, especially if it wasn't exactly the same. But I imagine that things change so fast that even it it was the same I'd still learn more.

By the way in my last post I said I wouldn't use wikipedia with a customer at the reference desk. Well I did use it yesterday. It was simply the best place to get the information she wanted. It was worded so that she could understand it and gave exactly what she wanted. I did show her information from a more authoritative site first and explained about wikipedia, but for what she wanted wikipedia was the best source.

Wikis

I have to admit that I have always liked the wikipedia, at least for my own home use. I know it gets a bad rap among librarians and I would never use it with a customer at the reference desk. But I do find it very useful at home.

I really wasn't acquainted with other types of wikis. So this was fun to look into. I really liked the Wyoming author's wiki http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/ It would be great to have one like that for Montana authors. Although it most likely would take a lot of work and effort to get it to a useful point.

I went to a meeting last week with others from the Montana Shared Catalog, at which, it was mentioned several times when we talked about how to get information out to others, that a wiki might be the answer. It is a good way to get instructions and information in one place and out to many people. But you have to be able to train people to remember to look there and for many it is just one more step that they don't have time for. Or one more thing to remember.