Playing Catch-up in Learning 2.0

I've allowed myself to fall way behind in the Library's Learning 2.0 program, mainly because the Flickr and mashup discoveries were simply not my thing.

Flickr looks great to me in theory; I can see why those who love it love it, but I'm not someone who works with photographs or images. Even to play around with Flickr would mean I'd have to use other people's images, or copyright-free images from the web, and without that connection through personal interest, there's just no point.

Mashups, on the other hand, leave my creativity completely cold. I can't explain why. I've seen mashups and mashup tools that strike me as clever or funny, but I don't feel the slightest urge to do it myself. My creativity tends to express itself through language, and it's pretty stubborn about not showing up at parties where it doesn't enjoy the music.

However, after talking it over with fellow Learning 2.0er Ducky, I felt sufficiently guilty that I dragged myself out onto the Learning 2.0 path in a bid to catch up.

I signed up for Flickr, uploaded a photograph, toyed with a few tools, and concluded that I did, in fact, not enjoy it at all. Happy to pick up a few skills to share with customers, happy to use Flickr in the workplace if it ever comes to that, but most probably won't use it for myself.

Mashups, weeelll... I re-read the discovery post, contemplated it all for awhile, and conclude that no, that's not where I want to be putting my creative energy. At present, I'm short-changing those areas of my life that deserve as much creative energy as I have, so I can't justify to myself spending time in a creative area that doesn't meant anything to me. (Sorry, Learning 2.0 program.)

Tagging interests me more, since it's a means of keeping track of things, or organizing the daily deluge of information. For now, I contented myself with retagging the posts to this blog.

Leaving the delicious and digg activities (but practically no time left in the afternoon to do much with them). Both sound terrific. In the end, I signed up for both, and I'll play around with them on another day.

Librarians

After having now received a great deal of help in the way of research and organisation tips from another librarian I work with (thank you Leftwinglibrarian) I find myself consumed with pity for people who have to study something without being surrounded by librarians. After all, what they don't know they know very precisely how to find out.

Of course, thanks to the existence of actual libraries, everyone does have access to librarians, but I suspect people don't use them nearly as much as they could, or should, and many would be astounded by what a difference they can make to things like research or study.

Free Online Databases

As study is compelling (erm, inspiring) me to expand my information literacy, I've just cornered our Corporate Librarian, Nina, and asked for a hand selecting professional journals for regular reading.

Nina gave me a very thorough introduction to the free online databases provided by CityLibraries Townsville and the State Library of Queensland (accessible to staff and patrons through the SLQ website and our own website).

Of course I knew of the existence of our online databases, and I'd used them very occasionally for simple searches. But having a highly skilled professional give you a guided tour -- and more than a little instruction on how to search -- just made me think these databases are an absolute hidden gem.

Among other things, they provide full-text articles from hundreds of encyclopediae, newspapers, journals and magazines covering the entire gamut of human knowledge, fully searchable, with the ability to set up e-mail alerts and RSS feeds to subjects of interest.

After demonstrating how to use all this to easily take care of keeping my information literacy current, Nina then showed me how to use the databases (particularly ProQuest Science, available through SLQ) to research for purposes of writing or pursuing a hobby, and again the amount of good, reliable, searchable information available (full-text or abstract, with a number of options for setting up alerts) was simply breath-taking.

Which is to say to my colleagues if, like me, you haven't explored our free online databases, do and, if you do, Nina is a supremely skilled and cheerful guide.

Catching Up... Or Not...

Well, finally scratching up some time to return to... well... everything. Week before last (and a little of last week) I was pretty sick, and let everything drop. Didn't write, didn't study, didn't keep up with the Learning 2.0 program (or read or eat or much else).

That was then, this is now. Catching up seemed as if it should be easy -- but it's not as if the world stands still. Backlogs grow, and work has been busy. Learning 2.0 can be hard when each day ends with the basics barely addressed.

I have gotten around to rewriting the rejected story and sending it off elsewhere (to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, for the curious), and I've gnawed at the bones of the final assessment of my current subject, and I've at least read through the posts I'd missed at CityLibrariesLearning -- working through the discoveries likely to take me awhile.

Why is there never enough time?