the introductory stuff

So, I thought that it would be logical to use my first post here to explain why I decided to participate in the Queens Library Learning 2.0 project. In a lot of ways, I don't think of myself as the ideal candidate for it. While I won't claim any expertise in these things, a lot of the components of this project are things that I know and use regularly. And even the stuff that I don't utilize, I have a passing familiarity with.

And yet, one of the things about lifelong learning, that I actually don't think they made much mention of in the tutorial, is the fact that it's never ending. You don't get a certificate or a diploma for mastering the skills you decide to learn on your own. And the time you spend practicing and sharing what you know adds to your own store of knowledge. Whether it's a hobby or a language or some random skill, there's always a way to add to it, increase your proficiency, comfort or experience. And I think that this is especially true when technology is involved, because it's so quickly evolving and developing. The things that are pretty commonplace today weren't necessarily things that anyone would have even considered a year or two or five years ago.

And yet, how quickly they can become parts of our everyday lives. Last Friday, I noticed that the Google banner ad was celebrating their ninth anniversary. Which is cool, but was also one of those things like seeing your distant cousin's child at a family reunion, realizing that that person that you still think of as a toddler is now an awkward teenager. Meaning: I remember when I first started using Google. When I was a paraprofessional in Ohiom one of my co-workers told me, "Hey there's this new search engine I've been using. You should try it because it's pretty cool."

Thus, I hope that this experience will equip me better for the job I do everyday. I hope that this project will enhance what I do, both at home and at work, in these many hours that I spend online. I hope that what I learn here will make me better, more efficient and better connected all around. Ambitious and vaguely stated? Maybe, but it's still what I'm aiming for.

Finally, I'm hoping that this project will help me to know my colleagues better. We work for a huge library system; there are a lot of people vested in the success of the Queens Library. And as much as we might think we know each other because we see each other at meetings or sit on committees with one another or receive the same e-mails, there so much about one another that we don't share. Because we don't have the means or the time or the opportunity, or whatever. But libraries and librarians are very good at sharing. I can't tell you how many ideas for books or programs or displays I have gotten because I saw it somewhere else, read about it on a listserv, heard about it on a blog ... And it will be nice to learn stuff from my immediate colleagues, based on the experiences they share during this project, and perhaps develop relationships that will translate into the "real world" - be it at a meeting, a conference or over dinner and drinks.

Not to get all, um, kumbaya on you, right at the end. But yeah.