So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!

Well, after fourteen weeks, (most of those being behind everyone else!), I've finally come to end of the road with Cam23 Things.  Firstly I have to say that I've really enjoyed the course, the "things" I've experienced, and the ability to reflect upon it all.  I'm actually going to miss blogging too :(   Although I think that I will still use this blog to write about my continued use and experience of Web2.0 technologies in libraries.

No matter how much Librarians hate to admit it, Web2.0 tools, have definitely started reshaping the library world, and the services that we can now provide to our students.  The advent of them allows us to reach out to our users, become more interactive and market ourselves and our services in ways that weren't previously possible.

The things which I think are most useful are new methods of communication using social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.  This is a quick, effective means of communicating bite size pieces of information, to keep students up to date with our services.  The use of a Library blog would also give that opportunity, and this is something which I will look at, at a later stage. 

The things that I probably won't use in the library are, Library Thing, Doodle, Slideshare, Flickr and Google Docs.  Mainly because I'm not a fan and I think that there's no point in using something you don't like as you won't keep it up to date.

The things which have surprised me, and I find I've used a lot, especially for my own personal development and current awareness in libraries are; Twitter, Google Reader and blogging.  Twitter and Google Reader are great for keeping up to date with the latest news from other libraries, big stories and the latest developments in our profession.  Blogging has given me even more of an opportunity to reflect on what I do and how I learn as well as being able to reflect on our library service and how we can move forward and improve what we offer.

Wordle, the last thing was definitely funky.  I quite liked the idea that you can create word clouds quickly and simply from a list of words, or from a webpage.  I do think that Wordle could be used as a method of marketing various aspects of a library service.  I've included the Wordle I created of my blogspot.

As Clive Anderson says on "Whose line is it anyway, I'm going to sign off in the style of the Mother Abbess from the Sound of Music:

Climb ev'ry mountain
Ford ev'ry stream
Follow ev'ry rainbow
'Till you find your dream.