Lately, I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about librarianship, particularly related to my workplace. I'd really like to implement some library 2.0 ideas and I'd like to re-do our entire library website. However, neither of those ideas are picking up speed with the people that can enable them to move forward. In fact, one of the ideas was squashed unilaterally with no discussion at all. Yet, among all of these things I have had some research ideas and some project ideas that have surfaced.

1. Reading about library 2.0 and particularly one author's ideas of catalog 2.0 raises questions of how library 2.0 relates to information literacy. By making things easier and more convenient for patrons are we undermining making them more information literate?

2. I'd like to do a lot more screencasts, podcasts and other resources to help educate pratrons on our resources and services. In fact, at least one professor has inquired about a specific resource and a second professor just informed me that there isn't room for my usual presentation in his upcoming compacted class which would give me the perfect reason to begin these projects. Yet, I wonder to what extent having resources professors can assign students to view or that patrons can view at their convenience would impact the number of information literacy sessions offered. Hopefully, these resources would allow class time to explore deeper concepts, but professors and students are so easily contented by surface level content.

3. Related to the past post, our institution is working on reformatting our freshman orientation and experience. This is a great opportunity to include more library exposure for everyone. Unfortunately, knowing that everyone has had a very basic, initial exposure might cause more professors to assume students know what to do or believe them when students claim they have experience. We'll have to really push the fact that students need the support of library instruction that is specific to a course and an assignment rather than general.

4. This morning I finished reading Thinking Outside the Book. I've marked numerous essays to peruse more intently later and take notes on. One essay described how a library created an index of state periodicals not indexed anywhere else. Several ideas come to mind as I know that our library carries numerous publications that aren't indexed anywhere else. Yet I am most intrigued in the possibility of creating an index or specialized finding aid for faculty publications (both books and articles). Thinking about it, it seems a shame that we don't have such an aid already. It would also be interesting to take this idea a step beyond and do a list of alumni publications which could tie in another current institutional initiative.

So many ideas and so little time!