Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Dark Side Of The Web

I am fortunate to never have been a victim of identity theft. I am wary of these kinds of things and limit registering for different websites. So far I haven't received much spam and thus the gross majority of my emails come from people or websites that I know. The other emails I simply throwaway without looking at them.

Life Long Learning 2.0

This week had a diverse range of topics. The Higher / Continuing Education section was intreaguing. I don't think that I would want to attend an online school, even if it was directly tied to a highly accredited institution like Syracuse. I think I would not be able to engage myself in the learning process, if I did not have direct contact with my professors. However, the Wikiveristy seemed like it would be nice to learn about if you are just interested in the subject. It would give you a program to follow nad you could follow it at your leasure.

The Professional development portion reminded me of the different articles you will see on yahoo.com or msn.com. It was fun to see a quick blurb about something just to tease your brain a little. I already knew about Gardner's multiple intelligence theory, but I enjoyed reading the different inspirational quotations.

As for the Personal Growth section, it seemed a little amaturish. I was not impressed with the intructers on many of the web sites. They did not seem too enthusiastic and I lost interest in what they were saying. The only one that held my attention was howstuffworks.com because they used professional videos.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

OCLS and Library 2.0

It's comforting to know that the organization I work for is on the cutting edge of innovative thinking. It's particularly interesting to think that OLCS is developing in the same progressive way the rest of the world seems to be moving without prior knowledge that the world is moving in that direction. I guess it is a testiment to the think tank here. While we already discovered that we are congruently changing with the rest of the world, I would hope and believe that if after doing the research and seeing that we were not following the appropriate path, we would then reanalyze the situation.

As for the question how the new strategic plan impacts my work for OCLS... I just had my year evaluation and my new goal to empower myself is to learn more about our databases. This will help me better assist the patron as I will be more familiar with everything OCLS has to offer. These databases are also constantly adding more information and I think learning more about them will keep me in an innovative frame of mind.