Thing 12 -- A familiarity with social media was required in my MLS program. We had to join Myspace (facebook wasn't very popular with the adults at the time), had to write a professional blog, had to work in wiki's, had to use our online teaching platform (can't recall which one it was). I was a Research Assistant who worked from my home (in Phoenix - school was in Tucson) so I had to keep up with things virtually there too.
But I was familiar with this concept as I had finished the last year of my Master's degree in History in Indianapolis, IN all the way from Sumter, SC (horrid little town). So, back in the day (1998-9), my professors and I emailed regularly and I flew back and forth a few times. It was much more difficult to do than it would be today with wiki's and blogging and Google Groups, etc.
As for meeting people virtually . . . well, I met my fiance on eHarmony - so there's that. :) I've met a few people I would never have met - like a librarian in England, and a friend in North Carolina . . . and I can keep up with all of my family and friends scattered across the globe - it's pretty cool. I have used it in my professional career from the beginning and will certainly continue to use it. I'm very happy to have CPD23 to help me learn more of what's out there. And get me blogging again.
I've written about "community" a few times - I truly think the definition for this word is changing to reflect all the various ways we can have a sense of community and I love it. I love working in virtual environments on projects that need regular attention, but not necessarily regular f2f interaction. In my current library, we do not do enough to justify this kind of interaction - the thinking is still very old-school, f2f meeting, which is time consuming and most people can't do it anymore as our staff has been so reduced.
I'd love to see one particular thing change . . . we have had an Adult Book Meeting every month since the dawn of time. During this meeting, the Head of Collection Services runs the meeting allowing the various relevant department heads to talk about whatever relevant things they need to say (it's never THAT relevant), then moves on to his staff (of which I am one) and we go over some books that are popular and then he highlights about fifty non-fiction books from a giant list. It's grueling. There's yawning and doodling and flipping through pages and writing of grocery lists. It's just not working.
What I'd like to do is make this an Adult Services Meeting: talk about things relevant to the adult branch librarians, go over ideas for marketing their materials, database demos, generate more branch specific collection stats and discuss their relevancy and how they can used, talk about popular and hidden gem books, narrow departmental participation as much of the info isn't relevant to the branches, and continue the roundtable. We can create a Google Groups or blog to send lists, update information, send out stats to be discussed, and post meeting notes for those who can't make it. Also, rotate where we have the meetings - not just at our main location, but at the branches. Have some fun with it. Talk about specific books more. Be relevant to our librarians so we aren't wasting their time with an old f2f meeting model.
Change is possible - we're taking a survey to see what the branch staff want in a meeting and I can't wait to review the results. We have a few "older" librarians who want to just complain and do everything the same, but I think our budget crisis is giving us all a perfect excuse for change.
All in all, I love social media for work - I think it can be very useful. Just being able to have virtual meetings and a place to upload relevant materials and images - it's fantastic. Now the real challenge is getting everyone else on board!
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