Saturday, March 31, 2007

Library 2.0 - Staff Development Tools and More

This week's edition of Wired Magazine features an article on how libraries can ramp up their Web 2.0 skills via experimentation with free web tools. ">Public Library Geeks Take Web 2.0 to the Stacks discusses a program developed last year named 23 things which enables users to create blogs and podcasts, tryout Flickr, set up RSS feeds, learned about wikis, upload video to YouTube, and play with image generators and Rollyo, explore Technorati, tagging and folksonomies. Helen Blowers, developer of 23 things, believes that librarians need to know how to participate in the new media if libraries are to remain relevant in the 21st Century. Blowers is the IT director at North Carolina's Charlotte & Mecklenburg County Public Library where they are now in a pilot program exploring the creation of teen library services in a virtual world. They are asking for teen creators to help create a virtual library with Teen Second Life. As we develop our new Sirsi rooms, we need to be aware of how other libraries are meeting teens in the digital world.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Judy,

I thought it was very exciting to see your comments on this since we have been looking at many of the same ideas at GBN. In particular, Ryan Bretag (our Technology Trainer) has been exploring the potential use/application of Second Life to secondary educational settings. He has been meeting virtually with Kathy Schrock, Will Richardson, and others about this. Would you like to be involved? It would be great to explore this together, Linda S