Want to implement social software at your library?

If you have any interest in implementing social software tools at your library, you may want to check out some of the amazing proposals created by our participants for their libraries. I have organized the proposals by the technology they want to use and by library type. It’s obvious looking at proposals by tool that people REALLY were into wikis! YEAH! Many of these proposals are incredibly detailed and contain useful suggestions, strategies and examples. Surprisingly, considering the course has just ended, several of these proposals are already being implemented (and you can see a few of the results listed with the proposals). Congrats to Josalyn Gervasio, Karen Pardue, Matthew Murrey, Kris Veldheer, Rita Ennen, Holly Ristau and anyone I may have missed. And good luck to all of you! I can’t wait to hear what these folks are doing even three short months from now.

Dorothea wrote a wonderful reflection on the course from her perspective in which she doesn’t give herself nearly enough credit. I really can’t imagine getting the class done without her; her support was invaluable. I only have one correction to make on her post. She said that 10 of our presenters did not finish the course. That is not entirely true. Thirty people (so far, they have one more day to make things up) were recognized as having successfully completed all of the course requirements. Thirty-five out of forty people finished the course in terms of having gone through every week and having completed the proposal. Two other people participated nearly every week in chats and Webcasts, but did not do the proposal and did not blog (one was very uncomfortable with writing her thoughts down). Only three people actually dropped the class altogether (with one, I know their personal life got in the way; another seemed really frustrated the first week, though she never asked for help). So I think 37 of our participants got a great deal out of the course though only 30 chose to complete all of the required course components. That’s pretty good in my book. 🙂

Michelle, my “wing-man”, has also written a really thoughtful post on the class, on the state of online learning and on the barriers we face in trying to implement social software. It’s kind of a down post, but also a bit hopeful, because, hey, we made this course happen in spite of it all. I’m so happy to see that Michelle is getting better known in the profession and is getting the positive attention she deserves. The woman is a force to be reckoned with and is the true definition of a mover and shaker. She definitely keeps me sane (and makes me laugh).

I certainly have wonderful things to say about our other terrific organizers, but they haven’t written any reflections yet. 😉