maiden voyage.

I thought for my first post that I would explain to my current audience of slim-to-none why I’ve resisted setting up a personal blog for what feels like ages. Although I’ve contributed to a communications subject blog for a while now, my hesitation was equal parts not having internet in the house (which is still true and even less likely to change due to the fact that I live basically live in the forest) and an acute case of yet-another-blogging-librarian syndrome, which I’m pretty sure I still suffer from. However, I’ve decided to confront these impediments for three good reasons:

1. Three enterprising colleagues of mine at the Ohio University Libraries have organized a wonderful Learning 2.0 initiative as a means of encouraging lifelong learning among staff (for more information on Learning 2.0, read this post by Michael Stephens from the ALA TechSource blog). Although information and instructional technology is kindof already my bag I decided to go along with the program, fully expecting both to learn from it and contribute to it. Creating a blog is one of the first steps in the 10-week program, which encourages participants to learn a series of Web 2.0 applications in an ordered and accessible format.

2. The ALA Annual conference is coming up next week, and I’ve been thinking about blogging the conference as a way to get my feet wet. Also, because I’ve been working on an ALA Emerging Leaders project group that is focusing on new technology and its effect on libraries. We’ve created a wiki called Tech_Casting that deals specifically with the way libraries are using and adapting new technologies, and this is a good way to track its (hopeful) success and development.

3. I think about this stuff all the time, and it gives me a good way to keep track of things that come up from the research I’ll be doing this summer on the digital learning characteristics of Millennials for a directed readings course in my degree program.

I’m still hard at work on the wiki this week, so it’s back at it. More to follow.