Final Exercise

I have wanted to work with 23 Things for a while. I appreciated the opportunity to work with it and I am very glad to see so many members of the Heights Library staff finish.

Even though I am quite familiar with most of these, there are still a lot I need to learn. I am enhancing my skills through reading other sites such as Sphinn and other library blogs. I am definitely looking forward to attending the Ohio Library Council Innovative Environments Conference next week.

Going down the line of Things for what I can see as being useful for the library:
– Blogs – we’re doing them: What to Read Next and we’re being very successful with it. Our readership is consistently increasing and we’ve had quite a few authors comment on our entries.
– Flickr – We have a Flickr account: Heights Library Flickr I would like to have more pictures within the community and of programs on this page. It is not only a great archiving tool, it illustrates what we’re doing now. There are still things to watch out for. Legal considerations of using Flickr. I would hope that cease and desist would be the initial step in any battles over whether someone didn’t want a picture up on our Flickr page, hopefully with less legal bits…a persnickety email demanding us to take down the picture would be fine.
– LibraryThing – If we can integrate reviews and reading lists into our catalog, I think that would be a HUGE step forward.
– MyMaps – We have added a number of maps to our library website. It is indeed useful for those that want a visual layout of where the library is located. Historical maps within the community may also be useful.
– Facebook and other social networking sites – We have a page on Facebook. Cleveland Heights-University Heights Facebook page. There’s not a lot on there and I really want to build this up even more.
– Del.icio.us – We have used it in the past. I would like to see something like this work but we have something similar within our current website and through our content management system, it is almost the same type of interface. I just need to get more people trained on this.
– YouTube – As stated in my previous entry, we have a channel/account. We will get more videos on there not only of the library and its services but the community.

Now, for other tools that we didn’t cover in 23 Things that I want to utilize:
– Twitter or other forms of text reference – In light of Google’s announcement that they will be integrating chat with SMS, I can see this as a possibility to expand service. Even though one may state that this is a very small segment of the population that is texting, we need to look at that group as the future and we need to reach out to them, out to all people.
– Programming events that not only educate but can be entertaining as well. I want to bring/implement the Living Library to Ohio. I see this as a definite possibility for October 2009.
– Creating a library social network of libraries for library users. While the catalog is not created for patrons, I want to help create tools that library patrons need and want to use.

I want to keep learning. I also want the freedom and opportunity to completely focus on web work, social media/networks, maintaining community ties and creating the best website for the library. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to working with those that completed 23 Things…you are my little army now. 🙂 Not exactly. I feel comfortable in approaching those that completed in asking for assistance with these above projects. We can and will make this work. The social media movement is here to stay!