Thing 2

It's been almost a month, but I've finally done Thing 2! I've found that it's been really difficult to find time to work on this. Stephen Abram made me feel kind of guilty about this, with his comment about how 'if you have a passion for learning you'll be able to find time to do this.' I agree with that, but I've been busy! I've also been taking an online course in the basics of paper preservation, so I have to find time to go online to work on that in between all my other work obligations.

Anyway, I hadn't heard of the term Library 2.0 before this, so I enjoyed learning about this. Libraries definitely have to stay up to date in technology so that we don't fall behind and become obsolete. I am 23 and by far the youngest person in my work environment (I am an archivist in a museum with a research library). Being of this younger generation, I know how we like things! We want information now! And we want to be able to access it from anywhere! But, working in a museum that relies on memberships and admission fees, I also understand that we can't put everything out there for free!

I think the biggest challenge of Library 2.0 at our museum would be getting people interested in new on-line ventures. Most of our patrons are retirement age and many are not technologically inclined. But, then again, many are! A lot of people use the internet to do genealogy, so maybe we can have some sort of genealogical-information-sharing site connected to our webpage. And I really like the idea of a collaborative photo site! Maybe we could put some of our photos online and hopefully other people would put photos they have on the page! This way we would be providing these photos to the public, but we would be benefiting from their photos as well!

Blyberg mentions how he thinks L2 is going to require that libraries work together. I like this! I'm not quite sure how this will come about just yet, but it's definitely something to keep in mind!

As a coffee lover, I also LOVE the idea of a coffee shop! Man, that would be fantastic! But, I'm afraid we are just not busy enough for something like that to be practical here. Maybe someday...

One of the articles mentioned "LibraryThing". I hadn't heard about this, so I checked it out. What a great site! I am planning on starting a book club here at the museum and this site lists a lot of books that deal with "Minnesota" and "Minnesota History" and "Minnesota Authors". I will definitely get ideas here! In fact, if anyone is reading this post and you have ideas about Minnesota-related books we could read, please let me know! Plus, I have to come up with discussion questions, so if anyone knows of where I could get ideas for this, let me know! This "LibraryThing" site also gave me the idea to do an on-line book club. This may be easier than trying to meet one night a week. We'll have to see...

So, Thing 2 is complete and I have a ton of new ideas to try out here at my library! Now on to Thing 3!