Well week 12 is complete and with it the course. It would be remiss not to say thankyou to the State library for making the course available and another thankyou to V for her encouragement and incentives. This week I have explored social networking to varying degrees. Could not quite overcome my fundamental need to be cautious about what I put out there. The voyeur in me wanted to sign up to Myspace or Facebook and have a good look around. The real me could not bring myself to do it. Second life – don’t quite know what to say that isn’t clichéd (enough trouble managing my first life etc.). Liked the description of the Communities of practice for local government proposal being an attempt to harness the power of social networking to share problems, ideas and expertise – laughed at the comment in the Daily Telegraph describing Facebook for local government as the grimmest thing imaginable – “lots of bureaucrats swapping tips about how to complete form CG23, or fiddle their expenses”. The ALA’s profile of itself on MySpace was certainly something to aspire to!! From my own personal point of view I am happy to keep pushing myself to discover what is out there and participating in Library programs that use our new found expertise for the benefit of our customers.

• What have I achieved? – I know a whole lot more than I did at Week1 and I am motivated to know more
• Did I enjoy it? – Unexpectedly Yes
• Was it hard to do – At times yes, but worthwhile
• Have I overcome my dislike of that loud, uncontrolled cacophony out there? – No! - but I have mellowed a little.

Week 11

Really liked Google Docs – the edit anywhere anytime approach and the myriad of templates made an impression. I didn’t use ZOHO - what can I say realising I had to create yet another account deterred me somewhat and the training info did state that the core features matched up well with Google Docs. Did my desk shift on the first afternoon after I had looked at Google Docs and recommended the site to a customer who was looking for resume templates. She went away really happy. Slideshow looked interesting, but I still have such reservations about putting any of my “stuff” out there. I only have one picture on Flickr (and that’s of a tree) so you can see what I mean! I’m intrigued to know what Thumbstacks offered, but alas there was no access available and the Slideshow exploration of online tools wouldn’t open either on the occasions I tried. In theory the collaborative options all seem great, but being in the “lap of the gods” in terms of availability a lot of the time makes me really appreciate an in-house network with somebody at the help desk when things go wrong