Thing 12 Social Networking

I know what I am about to say will receive many gasps from some other librarians. I believe that social networking is a wonderful way to connect with people. I have had a myspace account for almost a year and I LOVE it. After reading some other posts, I realized that I am in the minority about the seeing the value of these sites. Isn't that what we should be all about? Connecting with people? Of course, like anything else, there has been some publicity about how myspace isn't safe for kids. You have to be 14 to have an account. Of course, kids know how to get around this. Many of my former students have profiles and I am on their friends list. I made a point to talk with these kids about the dangers of chatting with people they did not know. We talked about not giving out personal info, like phone numbers, addresses, or even where you go to school. I used it as a lesson rather than reprimanding them. I think that most kids are just curious about the myspace world. By having my own profile, I can see what the kids are exposed to as opposed to ignoring this huge part of pop culture. From a professional standpoint, I see having social networking sites as a great way to publicize what is going on in your library. Kids are online joining these sites. Why not create one for yourself so that kids can see you as a person with a life outside the library? Or create one for the library where parents, kids, and the community can communicate about reading? I see this as just another way I can reach out to people and I see that as a good thing.

Thing 11 Library Thing

I was checking our another librarian's blog and saw the Library Thing link and immediately clicked on it. I set up and account which was super easy. Then I went to see what Thing was next on my list and that was it. So cool! I read so many books, kids and adult, that I always think I should keep up with what I read. This provides a perfect way to do that. I also love to see what other people have read for ideas on my next selection. I think students would love to be able to do this, also. They would really like the virtual book shelf. This is definately a tool that all books lovers will utilize often. LOVE IT!!!!

Thing 10

Learning to use online image generators was so much fun. I began by looking at what some of the other librarians had created. This task can take as little or as much time as you have to devote. I spent about two hours looking through all the images on Image Chef and TXT2PIX. It was a fun task that I really enjoyed. I can see using this for the library website and on my myspace profile. I will continue going through many more of these generators in the future just because it's fun. Maybe I'll think of some more ways to use these.. . . .