#23...and it's all over, now, baby blue.....

Well, this is an occasion to remember! I've done it! Yay is me!

This is a great moment. I was very keen to do this since I heard Helene Blowers and other experts speak at the State Library earlier this year. I felt like a whole world was passing me by, and that I was completely missing out. But I also found it all a bit overwhelming and terrifying!

It has been quite a slog sometimes, most things took much longer than I imagined they would as I nutted out what I'd missed / done wrong / not read properly / not understood. But there was a sense of great achievement (like you get from the perfect sentence!) when the blog post was done and I'd learned something/s new!

When I started, I had just taken an enormous leap into the millenium by buying a laptop and getting the internet on at home. Whacko! This was very fortunate as I would never have got through this if I'd have had to do it at work. I needed time and space and patience that couldn't be squeezed into the working day.

I feel full of ideas for using some of the 23 things at work, both in big ways like a library blog or wiki and in relatively smaller ways like being able to show people some of these things so that they, too, can see the light!

I like to imagine I won't forget the things I have learned and that I will go back to those that didn't quite gel and do a bit more fossicking. I have become a convert of rss feeds, youtube, image generators and flickr and am coming to grips with del.icio.us and rollyo.

Mostly, what Library 2.0 has done for me is increased my confidence on the web - no mean feat! I am much more at home on it - and much braver too! So while I might still find myself on World ebook Fair, scratching my head and staring hopefully, wondering what exactly it is I have to do to get the ebook to play, I'll now have a go and fiddle away until I find the way.

So, thank you Helene Blowers, and thank you Lynette and Leslie for the huge amount of work you've been doing so we can do this, and thank you Tara for setting the benchmark and urging me on! I salute you all.

And, by heck, I salute m'self!!