Week 9, Thing # 23 On To The Next Summit

What an adventure! This learning experience was excellent in covering such a vast field of new technology. I feel that at least I now grasp the idea behind Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. They are no longer ambiguous concepts used in the literature and news.

While I found it necessary difficult to find time for this investigation, I wanted to find out about the topics. There is no way that I would have done this on my own.

The carefully designed and thought out exercises and commentary is what made learning happen. Participants should be thankful to the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, North Carolina for sharing this with their fellow librarians. I look forward to more training opportunities like this one.

I understand they are continuing to explore with a Learning 2.1 program. (http://explorediscoverplay.blogspot.com/) I hope to be able to look into those as well.

It just points out that library staff must keep up with the social and technological trends in the communities and put in use by the public they serve. Now I keep thinking about what impact these technologies will have in the workplace as well as on information and service provision in the library over the next few years.

Week 9, Thing #22 Downloadable Audio Books

I thought I was familiar with Project Gutenberg! I did not realize that they had downloadable audio books and even a limited selection of digitized sheet music and downloadable sound music and spoken word recordings.

Week 9, Thing # 21 Podcasts

I was amazed at the many topics covered by podcasts although some were quite dated and of uneven quality. While I didn’t take the time to evaluate them, I was impressed with the number of podcasts for learning languages, including less well-known languages, and basic overviews of topics, such as Finances 101.

Initially, I had difficulty figuring out how to get my podcasts into Bloglines. It took quite some trial and error but it seems to have worked! Nancy Pearl Book Reviews, Denver Public’s podcasts of children’s stories and the Diane Rehm Show on NPR now are in my Bloglines feeds. At least one of them was updated today. Triumph!