Final thoughts

Wasn't it only a couple of weeks ago that we had the launch party at the Judge?? How time flies. I read through my previous posts just to remind myself of what I said and I seem to have promised to investigate quite a few Things for the new academic year. Oh dear, time is not on my side. However, if they can't be achieved by then, at least I have had a taster and can come back to investigate further.

Here are my thoughts about some of the Things (with links to my previous posts):
iGoogle - I still use it to gather all my favourite sites together and I will continue to do so.
Google Calendar - this is now being used by the Cambridge Librarians CamTools User Education group (which I'm a member of).
Flickr - I want to explore this further & add pictures of the Education Library for a possible virtual tour.
Slideshare - I will be looking at this over the next few weeks for inspiration for library inductions!
Podcasting - When I have the luxury of more time (ha ha), I would love to dabble with podcasts.
Facebook - still on the peripheral and tempting me after seeing how other libraries use it, but is this just a duplication of information which is already available and yet another site to maintain?
LinkedIn - I'm not planning to use this, but it's good to know what other professionals are using it for.
Twitter - Our Library has an account, but I won't be using it for myself.
LibraryThing - Fun to set up, but not particularly useful for Education as we have lists of new books available on CamTools.
Zotero - I now understand how this works!

A wide range of Web 2.0 technologies have been considered for Cam23. With all the possibilities, it's very easy to rush into using as many tools as possible to connect with our readers. But there has to be a balance between keeping up with what our readers are using to access information, and providing the information they need. I have mentioned CamTools in just about every post, but it really does help us to provide resources to all Education students. And as Faculty students are registered onto the Library CamTools site when they start their course, we have a captive audience! Saying that, I hope this final post doesn't make me sound blinkered or set in my ways. I have enjoyed looking at the Things and I've relished the opportunity this programme has given me to think 'outside the box' and to see what potential each tool may have for the Library service and for me as a professional. I wanted to do the following during my Cam23 journey:

1. Work with other colleagues within the University
2. Learn more about Web 2.0 technologies
3. Discover what tools could be used to improve services to readers

With confidence, I can tick all 3!

And to finish, here's my pretty Wordle:

Podcasting & YouTube

I've been thinking about how useful a podcast might be for the Education Library, especially for the detailed Online Research Skills sessions we run. Would students find an audio visual demonstration much more appealing than a slideshow? Our powerpoint presentations are uploaded onto the Library CamTools site for students to look at, and going from the site stats detailing the number of times they were downloaded, this has been fairly successful.

The Library tour podcasts at Goldsmiths Library and the audio pods from the University of Aberdeen are useful for new readers who use large libraries I had a quick look to see if the UL has one but wasn't able to find anything on the web pages. Education isn't a particularly huge Library so we wouldn't do a podcast for orientation purposes.

It was fun to look at some of the YouTube links that Andy listed - I loved the L-Team! Goggle vision from the University of Liverpool does a nice view on Google v. databases - might be looking at this again when we come to do our sessions. And as for the Lady Ga Ga video - well, there's not much to say really...

As has been demonstrated by some of the above examples, podcasts and YouTube can be used to market library service to readers as it's another way of communicating to students, and is potentially useful for those who study on distance courses. We have 2 online courses running at the moment and students only attend sessions in the Faculty once or twice a term, so perhaps a Library podcast highlighting the wealth of electronic resources available at a distance would be helpful. As mentioned in the Podcasting in academic libraries article:

"Many libraries produce podcasts as an outreach method for distance education students, who are often unaware of available library services and unable to take instruction classes."

This is something I would like to pursue further, but as the new academic year is fast approaching, this will sadly have to wait until next year...

Delicious

I've had a look at how the Judge Business School and the Casimir Lewy Library are using Delicious and it may have potential for some resources we currently have listed on our 24hr Library pages. Tags would be useful to help readers find information in a particular area (see the tag cloud at Thunder Bay Public Library). In one of the items for further reading which Emma suggested, Tags help make libraries Delicious, I read an interesting comment:

“If our web-savvy users notice [that the library] is using del.icio.us...our hope is that they will recognize our position in the community as information providers, visit our web site, work with our virtual collection, and become engaged library users.”

At Education we continually try to think of different ways to present information so that our readers will find it easy to access what they need for their assignments. Which is why we currently use CamTools as a platform for all our resources because of it's flexibility and we are able to make immediate changes to information available on wikis.

I created a personal account a while ago just to familiarise myself with what Delicious does. I'll now look into creating a Library account to bookmark those sites which may be relevant to Education students and link it to our web pages and CamTools sites.

The journey begins...

My Cam23 journey started in April when I was asked to become part of the Project Team for 23 Things Cambridge. I saw this as an opportunity for me to:
1. Work with other colleagues within the University
2. Learn more about Web 2.0 technologies
3. Discover what tools could be used to improve services to readers

I had already started using iGoogle & Delicious before the programme started, and Wikis are part of the CamTools VLE which I use daily. I don't use Facebook, but I've searched YouTube, read blogs, etc, but hadn't engaged with them in any detail.

We all have to start somewhere on the Web 2.0 road and I see the 23 Things Cambridge programme as an exciting opportunity to explore a selection of tools and see what they have to offer librarians & their libraries.