Librarian by Day

At the end of the Becoming 2.0 four day workshop we all shared how we get organized.   Let’s face it, most of us are expected to do more and more in the same amount of time.  Some of the tips and tools the class shared were: Evernote, Getting Things Done, 43 Folders and Google notebook.  I’ve read about to do lists and index cards on other blogs.  I think it’s important to do what works for you and what works for you might not work for others, but I’m always looking for new tips and tools.

My system?  A notebook at work for note taking and actions items on the right hand side, colored pens to differentiate between different days or subjects, my Centro’s Palm task list, a moleskine for notes from books or other places, large colored post it notes for that days to-do list.  Yeah I know, but it works for me .

What works for you?  What tips and tricks can you share?

I’m a little late, but just in case you haven’t seen the latest music video sweeping libraryland. Warning! It’s catchy!  If you want to sing along the lyrics are here.

Thank you to David Lee King and Michael Porter for the tremendous amount of effort they put into making this awesome library related song and video.

I just happened to be in Parker Colorado (near Denver) yesterday when the Tornadoes touched down.  I was headed into a restaurant for dinner when we looked up and saw this.  There were no sirens and at first the people around us didn’t notice.

I didn’t learn until later that it’s the most dangerous when it’s straight up and down. 

I head conflicting reports of how close it actually was to where I was at.  The odd thing I didn’t notice until it was over was how still it was.  No wind.  Despite living in both Iowa and Missouri, this is the first time I’ve seen a tornado.  There were two tornados that touched down and luckily no one was hurt. 

I saw and participated in a discussion on this on one of my email lists last week. I thought I’d take more time to write out my thoughts and responses on my blog.  Sarah posted this over in MaintainIT but it looks like she didn’t open it up for comments so I’m going to.

Here is part of the email I sent the list

One of the problems I’ve seen with 2.0 is the library runs out and gets a blog or facebook page or whatever and declares themselves 2.0. They don’t consider who they are trying to reach, what they are trying to accomplish, how they will accomplish it or measure success. We need to take the same approach to 2.0 that we’ve taken to library services for years. Not every tool will work for every library and community. Some libraries have wildly successful film programs or extensive tools for small businesses, but not every library does. We look at what our community needs and what works best for them. The same approach should be taken with your web tools.

My answer is yes.  I think there are many aspects of Library 2.0 (and web 2.0) that are providing better service to our patrons.  Right now I’m using a blog to create a new Readers Advisory service for our patrons.  Learning 2.0 & Learning 2.1 teach our staff about technology and terms our patrons are using that they might now have known about before.

I can go on and on with examples and arguments, but what I really want to know is What do you think?  Do you have some great examples of Library 2.0 or Web 2.0 is helping (or not helping)?  Is the objection to 2.0 that we’re placing a value judgment on it that we don’t apply to traditional services ( and by that I mean when we order the latest romance or horror novel)? Are we doing a disservice to our patrons by having a blog?  Are gaming events a waste of our valuable time?  What should we be doing with our time?

On Friday I finished the last day of the four day Becoming 2.0 workshop.  I’m not used to spending that much time talking to people, some days I don’t talk to anyone.  So at the end I was pretty tired, but that’s passed and now I’m just excited.  There were 17 “students” and everyone of them has at least one thing they were planning to start when they got back to their library and each one was different.  The great part of Web2.0 (or the Social Web) is that you can take what works for you and your patrons, and they are doing just that.  As part of the class we had them create blogs and I really hope they keep blogging so we can follow what they are doing. 

I have to say that this was a great group of people they were all willing to share tips and tricks and suggestions with us and each other.  So thank you to all of them.  I’d also like to say thank you to MOREnet who never fails to to be a wonderful host! They really go out of their way to make everything run smoothly!

We’re covering feedreaders in the workshop today so I thought I’d ask, how do you organize your feed reader?  I recently made the switch from bloglines to GoogleReader.  I’m still  playing with the many tools it gives you. I’m a big fan of using folders or labels to organize and prioritize my feeds.  

The friends folder is pretty self-explanitory, any time something pops up in there I check it first.  The daily folder I don’t always read daily but it’s high priority feeds and I try to keep it to 10 feeds or less.   Day in the Life are the blogs that made it on the Day in the Life wiki.  I have several different folders for the feeds tracking my library.  I think I need to break out “Library stuff” into smaller groups though, any suggestions on more labels?  How do you organize your feeds?  How do you prioritize what gets read first? 

After much preperation the time has finally arrived!  This week I’m cohosting a Web 2.0 workshop sponsered by MOREnet and the Missouri State Library.  The topic – They asked us to talk about using Web 2.0 tools in your library! 

Even better, my cohost and I created the whole thing using Google Docs.  How else are two people going to edit a presentation at all hours of the day and night?  These will not be on my slideshare account if you want to see them you’ll have to check them out on the wiki after the end of the week.  They wont all be up until the end of the workshop on Friday. 

If you don’t have, don’t want or just aren’t signed into your Google account you can watch the presentation. 

But if you want to get more from the presentation you should sign in. 

If you log in with your Google account you can see the Speakers Notes.  You’ll be able to see the notes the speaker has entered for each slide, and in this case who is responsible for each section of the presentation.