Thing 22 - Finish line is in sight!

Thank god we didn't have to create another account for this step. Now that I am (basically) finished, I have to say that has been the most frustrating part of this - that to truly evaluate any online tool, you have to join (dum-da-dum-dum).

In any case, I do plan to keep up with at least some of the things I learned during this process. I will definitely keep up with my Facebook account, my Flickr account, and del.icio.us. Those (for me personally) were the three biggest "finds" during this process. I'd put my RSS feeds in there, but I haven't been back to it in months, so that sounds scary. Some online tools (YouTube, podcasts, wikis, I.M.) I'd already been using and will continue to do so.

As far as benefit for the public-at-large, yes indeed-y-deed. I think that more and more folks are going to look to librarians to show them how to navigate through these online tools. The only problem I see is ... how. Yesterday a patron came in and wanted help on EBay, shopping for a kayak for his wife. He'd never used the Internet, let alone logged on to an Internet computer at our library, and wanted me to basically sit with him (for how long?) and walk him through the entire process ... selecting, bidding and all.

Hold up, dude, not possible on a Wednesday afternoon when the after-school kids are just about to hit the library.

So, that is a major roadblock that I see in terms of how we can use our knowledge of these tools to help patrons. It requires a lot of one-on-one help, and while you can offer classes on FB and blogging, getting folks to come (and retain the knowledge they learn) is up to the patron ... and as we all know, that don't always happen the way it should.

In any case, I am very glad that I had the opportunity to participate in this, and even more that I was required to finish (thank-you, Lynn!) which kept my butt in gear.

23 Things - Adios!