So yesterday, I spent some time with another one of our 2.0 project coordinators at a "lunch n learn" - wherein we basically just brought a laptop into the main cafeteria / lunchroom area (plus some candies) and offered to troubleshoot 2.0@CSL issues in real-time or at least talk about the project. We're hoping to up participation, which hasn't been very high, despite the encouragement of our Agency head, who has effectively given people permission to put their other duties on a shelf for a bit and devote some time to this.
(As an aside, folks, given that I'm as guilty of this as anyone else - it's just a library! There, I said it. My husband is an EMT - he can't put aside driving the ambulance to do an online learning endeavor during his shift, on the whole. But for us librarians, there is little that we do that can't wait an extra day, week, or even month, if need be (depending on the project/task). So yes, you CAN put that stuff aside and look at the 2.0@CSL learning project. If you pay attention along the way, I should add, you are likely to find tools that actually make you more efficient and capable of handling all of those duties over time. For example, I'm using a time management/task auditing tool right now to improve my workday efficiency. The first week, I discovered that I was spending WAY too much time in email and too little time in the other tools that I need for my job. That awareness kept me from falling into that trap in subsequent weeks. I've been doing it for a few weeks total, now. I'll let you know how it works out at the end of my experiment.)
On the other hand, I just noticed that I myself haven't updated my blog in quite a while, due to time constraints. So even though I'm finding time to get in some of the 2.0@CSL, blogging is lower on the priority list.
A few fun things I noticed today while pinging along (too much caffeine or too much chocolate - you tell me):
* I'm trying out the page2rss function for our homepage - I'm not super-hopeful that it will be able to offer much - I still think I'm going to have to manually create RSS feeds somehow for our pages (until we go onto a proper CMS), but here's the link for Page2rss in case you're interested - http://page2rss.com/page?url=www.cslib.org/
* All of the blogs I follow (when I have time) & have marked "public" - including a subfolder for those that are 2.0@CSL-related are visible at http://www.bloglines.com/public/sclapp
* I noticed that one of our participants did her own custom home page using Pageflakes... then there was this great notion of using a custom home page from Pageflakes or Netvibes for your default home page on public access computers in your library... I thought, this would be good for us, then the difficulties began to emerge as I tried to create one... for example, if we just wanted to include content of our pages, I'll need to widgetize that content. I'm checking out Widgetbox and it doesn't look super-difficult, but it definitely isn't as quick and dirty an answer as I was hoping for. (http://www.widgetbox.com)
* I've been going through some great presentations on Slideshare - one of which is particularly apropos given that we've now had serious call to examine the usability of our web site & services - "Crafting the User-Centered Library" from Cliff Landis - was done at Internet Librarians' 2008 Conference - http://www.slideshare.net/clifflandis/il2008-crafting-the-usercentered-library-presentation
* I used Socializr to automate the invitations / RSVPs / guest list for the website usability workshop - have been happy with it so far - it's a pretty neat tool that we might want to take advantage of in the future...
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