Last Unit - Social Networking

As our NetTrek adventures come to a close, I'm a little sad. I have definitely learned a lot and Brandy has made that very easy with all her hard work in monitoring and reporting our own progress to us. NetTrek has been very educational and has forced many of us to explore the web in ways we other wise wouldn't. So Brandy, thanks for all your efforts and help!

I first went through and looked at the library pages on facebook and was amazed at how many of them also had twitter and flickr accounts. I'm not sure why I was so surprised, since DBRL tweets (twitters? has twote? haha j/k) but it was eye-opening to see other libraries reaching out to their patrons and students in such an advanced way. I love that libraries across the continent are keeping up with technology and using it well.

Both librarian articles on social networking mentioned not only using sites, but using them well. Not just having a facebook page to be "cool" but to actually reach out to their patrons and improve their services to the community. In theory it is a great idea, but maintaining the page and continuing to add to it is certainly a must, especially with the target audience in mind.

ps - anyone else notice that the hot topic on twitter is taylor lautner's birthday?!?

Bibliocommons

Our new online catalogue is so easy! And fun to browse. I was lucky enough to attend the board meeting with Pat Kopp's Bibliocommons demonstration last spring, and I have been looking forward to being able to mess around with it myself ever since.

One of my favorite features is that patrons can write their own comments and rate books. As a frequent user of foodnetwork.com these sorts of comments have prevented me and encouraged me from trying recipes, based on other user's opinions. I love that I can now do the same with my book choices. I rarely read a book that wasn't recommended to me by a friend, and now I have lots of online friends to help me!

I also enjoy being able to browse the shelves online. Yes, I realize that our actual shelves are about a 20 second walk from my desk, but playing online is fun too. The scavenger hunt was a great idea as well, as it encouraged us to explore Bibliocommons in ways some of us never would.

I hope the public enjoys Bibliocommons as much as our staff has!