Friday, September 28, 2007

Things #1 and #2, and an Introduction

I've decided to use my blog as both a commentary on The Things and The Process. I've also decided it's pretty much useless for me to remain anonymous. I'm Karen. I'm the YA teen librarian at Forest Hills. I live in Sunnyside, almost exactly between the Woodside and Sunnyside libraries. Like many of you, I attended Stephen Abram's talk last March. The only difference between you and me is that I sent an e-mail asking if we could bring Learning 2.0/23 Things to Queens Library. Six months later, here we are. The beauty of the PLCMC program is how easy it is to replicate. We kept pretty much everything the same except we added "Explore Facebook."

As one of the adapters of the QL L2.0 program, I have experience with most of the Things. Even though I won't be experiencing them for the first time, I hope I'll still be able to look at them as opportunities to think about how we can use these applications with each other and our patrons. One of my goals for this program is to figure out better ways to communicate with my colleagues, or at least figure out a way to gather us for an unofficial happy hour.

I don't have much to say about Thing #1 other than it seemed to be very confusing for people that although the program started this week, they wouldn't register until next week. Someone even left a comment that it seemed counter-intuitive -- which I completely understand -- but I knew it would make things easier on the QL L.20 Team's end if we had the blog links at the time of registration. It was selfish and the process will probably be changed if we repeat the program.

As for Thing #2, I think I wanted to be a librarian because I am in love with lifelong learning. You cannot work at a library and not learn something new every day. I liked the tutorial because it highlighted how important it is to commit oneself to learning new things. Out of all the habits, it is probably hardest for me to set goals and to maintain confidence. Learning new things puts you in a vulnerable position, and no one likes to feel stupid.

I have absolutely no issue with seeing learning as "play" or fun, and I love teaching other people new things. I am very much about tricking people into learning and disguising it as fun. I did school visits near the end of the year and I gave seventh and eight graders a blank "library" bingo card. I told them to fill in the squares with all the things you might find or do in the Forest Hills Library. I had prepared slips of paper with about possible 40 responses. As each slip of paper was pulled (Community Service, DVDs, Read Down Your Fines), I explained it. By the end of the visit, (hopefully) they knew all the things the library had to offer them.

As a YA teen librarian, one becomes accustomed to building things people might not come to. I am happy to see it looks like my colleagues will be participating in this program. Yay for QL L2.0!

3 comments:

Logan Ragsdale said...

Thanks Karen for all the work that you are doing. I too attended the Stephen Abram program and was very excited. I had mentioned to people at the Central Library Division level that it would be cool if we did something like the 23 things, so I am glad you sent an e-mail to everyone and that it all came about. I am very excited. Playing and learning at work and learning with our co-workers is a good thing! Thanks.

hood_and_hat said...

Logan, I knew there had to be other people who wanted to do 23 Things too. Great minds, or at least excited minds, think alike.

Jenn said...

hm, great idea for a class visit. much more entertaining that a boring spiel. i'm totally going to rip you off on that one. seems the sharing with colleagues thing is working already!

and thanks for being instrumental in bring the project to queens. i actually didn't get to attend the stephen abram's talk (although i wanted to), but i remember reading about it when plcmc started their program and thinking it was such a good, vital idea that more libraries should embrace. it should be fun to finally be part of the process.