Task : Summary

Final thoughts on the Lane Library 2.0 experience - overall fantastic. I've decided to keep the blog up and running and will try my best to maintain it with new posts. I've had a lot of fun going through the experience and definitely feel like I've learned a lot. I was either already aware of or very comfortable with at least half of the things on the task list, but there were definitely new things that I tried out that I had previously been a bit intimidate by before (wiki's and feeds for example).

In the end, I can definitely see the personal and professional value to this exercise. I'll incorporate many of the aspects into my own personal life and have been really challenged to examine how I can incorporate them into my professional life as well. In the end, I really can see the value in almost all of the different aspects that we looked at - one exception for me is Facebook. In that case, it's not that there isn't/couldn't be value, but I think that I am really stuck in my own prejudices about it. I don't particularly like the interface and found it difficult to browse through it and on top of that I think that I'm a bit stuck by my own use of myspace. However, I can see that it could be successful for other users as just one more tool to gain access to libraries and librarians.

In the end, this whole experience has really made me aware of just how much is going on online. While I like to think of myself as relatively computer-savvy and in touch with what our group of patrons are using the digital environment for, I've realized that there is so much more happening that I realized! Being able to speak meaningfully to our patrons about where they can find information online, how to evaluate it, and how they can creatively use it is integral to our success as a library. I am convinced that in order to have those conversations, we need to maintain our awareness of what's actually happening out there.

Kudos to our library director and our marketing team for pushing this program forward!