Systems Thinking

Welcome to the tenth and final blog entry on this Systems metablog!

In the beginning, hyde_from_systems felt irrational fear at the concept of thinking like a Systems Librarian would think, but it has come to pass that this fear has been substituted with something a little more like acceptance. It is clear that anyone who will be working in the Information Management business will have to engage in systems thinking, either of the soft and/or hard variety. I envision my professional life to have many more instances of soft systems analysis within the human resource management realm, but I can (now.. after some time) accept that I will also need to know how the hard systems in the library work. Perhaps it will only be me who can fix the printer. Oh dear.

The underground theme of this assignment for me has been to discover the possibilities of blogging and to determine which of these attributes are best for a young adult audience in a public library. I think the insistence on having a library blog is, well, faddish. The thought of communicating with THE LIBRARY seems not only silly, but somehow insulting to the clients. Communicating with specific members of the library community, sure. But the library as an entity all on it's own is just too strange. I think that the YA page is perhaps the perfect place to have a blog. Have the Youth Librarian(s) and other staff members blog about real life things, not just about what the library is doing. A blog is NOT purely a marketing tool. If we are to be fully submerged in this 2.0 business, we have to learn how to do it right. So blog about books, about music, about movie, about how crappy it was to get out of bed this morning, how much you love your cats, or how disturbing you think the current leggings trend is (lookin' at you, Foster).

I also think many of the add-ons that I've utilized in this here blog are great ideas for library blogs, especially for YA users. The LibraryThing widget is just great! I think it's obvious how fun that could be for a discussion group, and for actually encouraging dialogue on a blog. The GoogleMaps/Tagzania mash-up feature is also fun; a great way to have YA clients work together to create maps to share! Where are the best record stores in town? What shop has the best coffee? An awful lot of possibilities. The search box is pretty useful as well, especially to search the site itself. Often blogs are rolling continuously, and searching through can be a pain. I like the idea of linking young adults to different search engines as well. Perhaps a feature where Google, Yahoo, and some other less-known search engines are used so that people have a range of options at their fingertips.

All in all, Blogger is quite easy and painless to use, and I would definitely use them again for another blog. I've definitely enjoyed this assignment, and I'm finally coming to terms with the necessity of technology in my life. I'm slowing leaving behind my Luddite past!

Cheers,
hyde_from_systems