23 Things

As librarians, we're constantly challenged with learning about, adapting to, and co-opting new technology. As we've already known for quite awhile, the library is about more than just books! At LAR, some of the librarians have been doing what's called, "The 23 Things Web Challenge," a sort of Internet scavenger hunt designed to bring us all up to speed about all the fancy, new, user-driven content on the Internet (a.k.a. some of the things that make up the whole Web 2.0 revolution).

I've just finished doing my 23 Things and I discovered that some of the 23 were already familiar and some weren't. I'd already used things like Flickr, Blogger, and LibraryThing, but I wasn't too familiar with pretty neat sites like Rollyo, where you can create a sort of customized search engine that only searches the sites that you know you want to look at, and del.icio.us, where you can basically take your web page bookmarks with you to any computer and bookmark stuff that you want other people to see.

Bottom line, many of these technologies can be used to create innovative library services and reach out to patrons in new ways, but only if your library system and administration are forward thinking enough to embrace Web 2.0 and allow people to be creative in their use of these tools. Thankfully, OCPL is one of those libraries! Let's hope all this new knowledge will help us to be innovative and adopt those techie things that will be most useful to keeping libraries alive and well!