Up until this class I was inexperienced when it came to blogging. I never followed anyone’s blogs, however, I would find links in news articles to people’s blogs and read snippets of their thoughts. Just this year I opened a Wikispaces account and that was my first experience with “naked conversations” that we discussed in class. Through my experiences with wikis I felt like I had more control over what was public and able to be changed by invited members. So initially this blogging assignment definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone. Choosing my words extra carefully came to be a habit during the blogging process, which is not necessarily a bad point, right?
In some ways blogging is more beneficial for a class like ours than, say, an online forum through Oncourse. I enjoyed seeing every classmate’s own, unique take on the selection and design of their blogs. This reflected their interests, style, personalities, that don’t always get to be revealed during a forum discussion. Blogs also allow for embedding media that allows for a richer reading experience. Rather than click on links from a forum post, having instant access to a YouTube video, for example, of a mash-up drives home the message of the blogger more quickly. The ability to add tags to blog posts also helped me to understand every classmate’s take on a topic and I loved seeing their cloud tags on the side of their blogs. It made me want to add them myself to my own posts! Hindsight is 20/20…
In terms of the blogging process for myself, I had a positive experience with using Blogger from Google. The familiar Google layout of prompts and icons helped the set-up go smoothly. I also had fun choosing a design of the blog that I think matches my aesthetic and take on the world of design. Since these blogs are social conversations I wanted the space to be an attractive one! Another feature of Blogger that I liked was the ease of changing the formatting of the text, video, and images to the posts through the HTML view in the editing of new posts screen. In the future I will be adding more widgets to the blog to get some experience with that. I once tried to add a Shelfari widget to the blog, however, it was too big and covered up much of the text of the posts. I’ll have to give it another go and resize the widget. Be on the lookout for more to come to my blog!
On that note, I think it is safe to say that I will continue to blog after this class is over. It may not be focused on just emerging technologies in libraries, but also on education, school libraries, and web 2.0 tools that can be used by students, teachers, and parents. I hope that I will feel more comfortable over time with the concept of sharing my thoughts with the public—especially as I begin my career in the library field. Teaching is one important aspect of the job, however, the tools with which we teach in the library is significant as well. Blogging may help me make sense of the journey I will be going on with my future students and staff members if they are able to comment on the happenings of the blog topics.
As library patrons are becoming increasingly connected, libraries, even school libraries, should be current in their use of reaching their patrons. This course, and the ongoing blogging assignment, has helped me to realize that in the numerous emerging technologies of today, librarians can apply them to their websites. All it takes is careful consideration of the best tools to use and time for moderating the tools. It is not enough to just want to do it and then preparing the website interface for the new tool. The staff must be consistent in promoting the tools, communicating the message to patrons and actually contributing to the tools themselves. If we want patrons to do so, we must expect library staff to be a part of the “conversation” as well. After all, as we discussed on our first night of class, web 2.0 is on its way to web 3.0 soon and librarians don’t want to be left behind in the web 1.0 world.
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