Thing 23 - Conclusion

I finally finished the first 23 Things years after I first began. The roadblocks have been sometimes too high to hurdle. Flash Players that aren't updated, and locked down computers are the major hurdles. Time is always short.

When I attend conferences with academic librarians and hear about how open their computers are and how open their institutions are to experimentation, I become quite frustrated.

By this time, too, at least 50% of the 23 Things are no longer novel to me. I've heard of and been using them in my day-to-day job for quite awhile. I've tried out and discarded some before beginning official work on the 23 Things.

By now, at least 2-3 years after I first heard of and began trying out the 23 Things, quite a few of them are no longer cutting edge. The library needs to be more open to experimentation if it truly wants its librarians to remain on top of technology.

I am also disappointed at times in Melsa. A library organization that recommends using unreliable websites (wikipedia) is of questionable value. I've looked at some of the next 23 Things and question the value there, too. Melsa is recommending that we use websites for learning opportunities that we are continually pointing our patrons away from. If the point is to be familiar with what our patrons are using, I think we already know that. Our jobs as librarians is to try to steer our patrons to reliable sources.