Summary: PALSPlus2.0 Learning

Excellent!

This instruction / exploration has been one of the most exciting aspects of my recent life. Realizing this may sound pathetic to those of you who are not social cripples like I am, I admit that I do have children – even extended family - and do love them dearly. But being given work-time assignment exploring these new web2.0 applications is like being paid to think happy thoughts.

Easily, I can foresee setting forth some of these applications as ongoing lateral pathways amongst members of our Consortium. We should definitely keep the initial PALSPlus2.0 website going and look into ways that new features might be added to facilitate our communications. It is fun and useful.

To go in these directions, we should be clear that we are embarking on a journey experimental in its particulars. At Claire’s Testimonial Dinner, after a few weeks of Library2.0, I noticed that my personal interface with colleagues had developed in depth and texture as we regarded new character facets revealed through web2.0 online activity. Other colleagues, whose names I learned that evening for the first time, were not even strangers to me as we had previously gazed into each other’s toy boxes via web2.0 activities for this PALS Plus instruction.

For my voice, I submit a hope to continue this work direction. For my personal website responsibilities, I will plan to add web2.0 capabilities as I think through the needs of my service populations. Certainly, we can minimally keep to the PALSPlus2.0 Bulletin Board and wiki, this amongst ourselves as Consortium staff. But folks, we must encourage participation throughout our communities. Collaborative endeavor is little other than another pie-in-the-sky without shared input and initiative.

As I think this through more carefully over some time, I will post to the PALSPlus2.0 Bulletin Board with suggestions on how we can begin to integrate web2.0 applications into our responsibilities as a Consortium. Individually, we can even begin to add features via hyperlinks to the Bulletin Board posts. The PALSPlus2.0 Committee can discuss the evolution of the website itself as we consider uses for web2.0 functionality.

Elaine Bindler’s bundling of cataloging resources as a del.icio.us grouping immediately shows example of accessible utility for our daily work:
http://del.icio.us/Bindler
All catalogers will note the usefulness of such a tool.

LibraryThing could easily be used to aid various collection development strategies. For instance, various LibraryThing accounts could be established as subject specific collections with both all-Consortium contribution potential and reference access.

Zoho word processor and other shared online productivity tools could easily be made commonly accessible for members sharing committee work, developing documents for the Consortium in a more truly collaborative manner.

And, we must remember: PLAYING...

These are four examples that come readily to my mind. Surely there are many others. We need only find the inspiration to understand these newly available potentials and – especially important – to participate in making the cooperative effort real, beneficial, and wholly salutary.