Connecting Librarian

I am typing this blog post on my Asus EEE PC as practice for a forthcoming week. On Monday 1st September, I am flying to Alice Springs for the ALIA Dreaming conference. I will be presenting with Glenn Harper from Frankston Library Service on Wednesday, the first day of the conference. We are presenting on what Casey-Cardinia, Frankston and Eastern Regional Libraries are doing with Web 2.0 tools. We will miss Maryanne Gosling, our partner from ERL, who is unable to attend.

I am excited about the conference, for a few reasons. Its my first ALIA conference, so that will be an experience in itself. Ill be doing all the first-time stuff too, like going to all the social functions including the first-timers breakfast. I also plan to do lots of networking and aim to meet up with many people that I only know online. If youre one of those people and youll be there, please drop me a line - I would love to catch up.

I am also looking forward to presenting. I have presented a session with Glenn before, but not on a joint presentation and not for a few years. Im excited about showcasing what our libraries are doing, I think we have reason to be proud of our achievements. On the otherhand, Im also happy that we are presenting on day 1 so that I can relax and enjoy the rest of the conference with the presentation done.

After the conference is done, I will be looking forward to the winding down. My family is flying up to join me on the Saturday and we will be spending the week in Alice Springs, at Kings Canyon and Uluru. Hubby and I have been before, but its the kids first trip, so we are all very excited.

Once home, I have 3 weeks to really wind down. Im not going back to work until the start of October with 2 of those weeks being school holidays. So I will have plenty of time to chill out and have fun with the kids.

So, I will be blogging plenty during the conference, but expect me to be very quiet afterwards for a few weeks. Although, if inspired at the conference, I might find that I am blogging more than usual.

I am a borderline Gen Xer.  Depending on which study you look at, I am sometimes listed as a Baby Boomer.  Labels don’t matter all that much, but I have always felt more affinity to Gen Xers and it always made me feel a little bit younger to label myself as such too.

But recently I have been feeling like I’m not much of a Gen X-er either, especially in relation to what others of my generation seemed to be focussed on.  Quite often I feel more of a digital native like my kids, I am soooo comfortable with most technology.   I game like they do, although my regular gaming is more online board games (which is definitely in line with my demographic), although I do get with the kids and play X-Box or Nintendo DS on the odd occasion.

I guess I am a bit like the person who migrates to a new country and just goes overboard in embracing their new home.  They learn the national anthem, try to live like a person in that country does, picks up the lingo etc - they basically begin a love affair with their new home and I guess that is what I have been like with Web 2.0.  And that has helped me to feel more like a digital native than an immigrant.

So what’s the problem?  I think its that the shine is going off the relationship a bit.  Probably for a few different reasons.

Firstly, the development of Web 2.0 tools seems to have slowed down.  Twitter, which I love is probably the last big thing I jumped on board with.  I signed up to Friend Feed, but for an organised person such as myself, I just find it to chaotic to work through.  Everything else considered Web 2.0 has been around for a while, some like blogs have been around for over 10 years!  Where’s the next big thing to catch my interest again?

Secondly, even though I am well entrenched in Web 2.0, most of my workmates, friends and family aren’t and I get so frustrated with this.  They don’t see these tools and their potential the way that I do and I can’t find the way to help them to do so.  I spoke to a new staff member whose former workplace didn’t even have a website!  Everyone still seems a long way behind and I feel like I’ve been in those space for a long time too.  When is it all going to catch up?

Maybe I’m just tired, maybe I need a holiday (coming up in 4 weeks, yay!) or maybe its all just in my head.  Would love to hear what you guys have to say on the topic, are you experiencing the same types of things?