Week 10: It's the End of the Line!

...but not the end of the learning, am I right?

Right!

Seriously, after finishing our journey through 23 Things I honestly do feel more motivated to pursue further learning about library and information utilities that I don't have a whole lot of experience with. Although I've spent a lot of time over the past few months simply enjoying being finished with library school, I really do love learning about new resources. Especially outside of a traditional classroom setting. And 23 Things has helped me to remember that I also like taking a little time to reflect on my experiences with new tools in writing. (Kind of makes me think that I should resurrect my original library blog - hmm!)

So. I enjoyed the 23 Things experience overall, but I especially liked having the opportunity to revisit resources I already knew something about and reconsider them in terms of their usefulness both to patrons and to library staff. Working in a public library setting (as opposed to my previous academic experience) has really driven home the point that the public is all over the map in terms of information- and tech-literacy.

By starting at square one, the explanations provided in our weekly activities encouraged me to think about how I would present and explain these resources to a patron who was completely unfamiliar with them. Our exercises also filled in some gaps in my knowledge about resources I'm comfortable with - for example, the explanations of the mechanics of RSS and wikis were helpful because without them, I would only have been able to explain either of these utilities to someone in my own very vague terms. There is a huge difference between knowing how to use something and truly understanding how it works, and our work with 23 Things provided a lot of useful insights into the latter.

So, yes - I do feel more comfortable with these resources now. And I definitely think that this was time well spent. In fact, I find myself wishing that this was an ongoing project (though perhaps that would require slower pacing or less frequent participation).

Finally, I absolutely think that patrons would benefit from a similar program, particularly given the format of our 23 Things experience. The passive, on-your-own-tome approach would be accessible and workable for so many patrons who might not be able to attend a class in person, and the inclusion of video, audio, and interactive elements is so important given the wide range of learning styles in any group of learners. There are many, many ways we can work to carry out the Library's mission, and traditional patron assistance is only the beginning of that. A program like 23 Things is a great example of a way to guide patrons toward becoming more technologically-savvy and information literate.

Sounds great to me!