COMPETENCY H

“IGNORANCE IS THE CURSE OF GOD, KNOWLEDGE THE WING WHEREWITH WE FLY TO HEAVEN.” –Shakespeare

H.
Demonstrate proficiency in the use of current information and communication technologies, and other related technologies, as they affect the resources and uses of libraries and other types of information providing entities.

       Libraries continue to evolve and change through the years. Today’s libraries are nothing like the libraries our parents grew up using. Technology is taking over the library world and creating exciting new ways to gather and share information. Twitter, Myspace, webpages and online catalogs have allowed librarians to reach the public like never before. I am very excited to be a part of this new era of library services.
      Participating in the online library program at San Jose State has allowed me to use new technological tools I have never accessed before. My classes were made up of a diverse group of students from different states and countries. Working in groups provided challenges with time zones and distances, however, in my groups we used Googledocs to provide access to everyone. Each group member was able to open a free account on Google and become added to one group document. Each group member could type their information into the document at any time of day and the others could view the information within seconds. Using this technology along with a few Elluminate sessions, my group collaboration came out very successful and I have used this same concept for collaborations with members at work.
       Wiki’s have become an easy way to share information and links on specific content with the public. In Library 210, Reference and Information Services and Library 263, Materials for Children Ages 5-8, I created group wiki’s on general multidisciplinary resources and children’s resources. For Library 210, my group and I were assigned the topic of General Multidisciplinary (Library 210 Wiki). We worked together using Googledocs to compile information on books, encyclopedias and atlases. The wiki was broken down into these three categories with annotated bibliographies and reviews of each item.
      For Library 263 my group and I created a wiki for children’s books (Library 263 Wiki). We divided the list of books into different categories including early readers, chapter books and digital resources. I was in charge of creating the wiki page on digital resources. The group chose keywords to link together and allow easy searching of the wiki. Each entry included a picture of either the cover of the book or the logo from the digital resource site.



References

Library of Congress (2006). On These Walls. Retrieved July 20, 2011 from http://www.loc.gov/loc/walls/