Learning for Learning's Sake

I'm taking the lead from a post on the "2.1" site and from a coworker's blog to learn something new, if not "every day" than regularly as a matter of life stance. That seems less daunting than "every day" and has a permanent sort of ring to it besides. Today I investigated more places to find full text articles on the open web and snooped around on Magportal.com. I did a search for "Polling companies" from a sample query given in the book I am currently reading: "Conducting the Reference Interview" a 2009 edition of a "How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians". I checked it out a while back and ended by purchasing it because I could not bear to part with it.

Meanwhile, back to Magportal... my search for polling companies was yielding discouraging results until I narrowed the query to either political, commerical, academic, or some other category of polling. That helped but was still focusing on the results of polls. Let's see...the customer query cited in the Reference Interview book was "Do you have anything on polling companies?" Oh - so maybe it's really a question for Refence USA, for just the names of companies who do polls. See, you really do have to ask people to clarify what they really want. I have to remember that. No customer to ask this time though.

I went over to SPL's site for Ref USA but they're doing site maintenance this week so it will have to wait until later.

#23: Summing Up

I had a great time navigating through this class. Now I understand a little what some of our customers find so intriguing. One of my favorite things was finally figuring out how De.lici.ous works and using it. Another high point was making a little search widget to put on the blog that changes and grows as you use it. I can imagine this being a useful library tool.

What I’ve learned is that these things are just tools to use depending on the problem or project at hand. Recently I’ve noticed how they can be used in combination, and that’s pretty neat too. The next step after these lessons is gradually getting used to using them more, and even depending on them for results. I hope the library keep using blogs and wikis to communicate internally. And with the public of course.

How has this program affected my lifelong learning goals? It confirms what I secretly hoped: that you can bring your real self to a challenge and contribute something of value to the effort. And that the ability to learn is a very transferable skill.

I’m a big fan of mind maps, (see my Flickr account under Favorites.) The “idea map” above is one of those things I like to doodle on PostIt’s. Maybe a future class could group material into modules based on interest or experience level. Each polygon could represent a group of features that work best together.

I hope future classes encourage more posting and commenting on the blogs, more collaborating and brainstorming and feedback, Maybe 2 or 3 people could work together to make sure everyone has “gotten” a lesson before moving on. I know not everyone had enough computer time or off-desk time to complete the work, and that some felt isolated and didn’t really get into it. Yes, I’d like more projects like this.