The pressure to blog ! #$%#@, updating recent events...

Somedays, the novelty of blogging wears off as I move on through this cycle of my sabbatical leave. Yet, it is a great way to capture all the things I am doing. And in the age of information moving at lightspeed, especially in the social networking scene, it is overwhelming.

Lately, I have been working on my campus survey and thesaurus for the archives. Also keeping up with the Sirsi/Dynix Institutes like Learning 2.0: Make "play" your New Year's resolution "As the Nationwide insurance commercials taunt "life comes at you fast", it's time for librarians to jump into the knowledge pool of Web 2.0 technologies and discover how these tools are changing the way many library users communicate, collaborate and receive information. Helene Blowers, Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County shares insights and best practices around the creation of Learning 2.0, an online self-discovery program designed to encourage staff to explore new technologies (blogs, wikis, podcasts etc.) and reward them for 'play.'

Then Dona Mitoma and I are visiting some colleges together. Dona is a Librarian, as many of you know, but she is the coordinator of the Reading Center at Pasadena City College. This week we went to Chaffey College and Riverside College. We visited with Frank Pinkerton at Chaffey and then went to the small Reading and Tutorial Center where the staff gave us a great overview of what they do. Then we trekked to Riverside College and took a tour of the new library. I had seen it before but wanted to visit again since it is a wonderful open architecture library and really gives a sense of the "digital library" as you walk in the door and view 180 computers in a commons area. Then we went to the Martin Luther King building which houses all the major computer labs in one building. We visited the Writing Center as well as the Reading Center and we were impressed with the extensive progrm there.

Today, more work on my thesaurus for the college archive. I also launched a beta of my campus survey so that I could test how Survey Monkey works to track respondents. Seems beautiful! I like it. Still no word from IMLS in spite of the fact that I call almost weekly. Hmmm... I may give up and put it in Survey Monkey however I wanted to play with this survey and mounting it on college's server.