Every journey begins with a single step ...

 ... And I'd like to think that the Web 2.0 Basics training is that single step at the beginning of our library service's journey towards a collaborative and interactive relationship with our community.

We created a Staff Blog last year, inspired by a team building project to encourage all staff to reflect on, and present to other council staff, the past, present and future roles of library and information services. On reflection, the timing was not great and the expectation that staff were familiar with, or even interested in, blogs was probably a little high. The completion of Web 2.0 Basics has introduced blogs to staff in a simple, fun and user-friendly manner, and our staff blog has been re-energised.

Flickr has the capacity to increase the profile of our library and information service, and it would be fantastic to utilise the photographic talents of our staff to showcase the services and programs we offer. While I see a future for flickr in our Web 2.0 strategy, it is of lesser importance than other applications. 

LibraryThing for Libraries should be the starting point for increased interactivity with the community, given that it is already part of our catalogue. To fully utilise it we need to train staff in its functions and demonstrate to the community just how amazing this tool is. We need to generate excitement! Perhaps we should set a LibraryThing target for Library Lovers Day? Every team member who demonstrates LibraryThing to three clients receives a ... (suggestions welcome)?

Facebook is the most obvious social networking tool we should be championing for libraries and information services. The aim would be to take the service to the people on the platform and in the space where they are most comfortable.  Once the page is established, with a suitable logo/image/brand, all that is required is one post of interesting information a day, and someone to monitor and respond, where necessary, to comments and posts. One hour per day of staff time should be sufficient to cover facebook monitoring for the library and information service.

Similarly, facebook should be available on the public pcs for the community to access ...

   " With over 500 million users, Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on earth, with over 250 million of them (over 50%) who log in every day. The average user still has about 130 friends, but that should expand in 2011"

That's an awfully large chunk of the community we are not engaging by not allowing facebook access.

Once we are comfortable with facebook, Twitter could be introduced. The immediacy of Twitter implies tweets should be tweeted throughout the day, as opposed to a single facebook post. To maintain brand consistency, the same logo/image/brand as facebook should be utilised. An hour of staff time per day would be a conservative estimate of required resources. 

The enjoyment of a journey is influenced by our fellow travellers, and I have found those who undertook the Web 2.0 Basics journey at the same time as I did to be refreshingly honest, open to new ideas and very entertaining.

A great big thanks to Melissa and Mark, and the City of Swan Libraries for creating the training and offering it to all WA libraries.

Thanks also must go to our IT department who allowed our team access to otherwise inaccessible sites on work computers.

And of course my fabulous family who has also been on this journey with me. Watching the In Plain English videos ... listening to me read through my blog posts (sometimes a number of times!) as I edit them prior to publication ... putting up with my tweeting, blogging and commenting ...

All of which just goes to prove that the journey is more important than the destination.