virtually a librarian

As I had hoped, the SLQ Unconference got me thinking a bit more about the shape of online services at MPOW. Coming away from the unconference, I made notes to myself to pursue a few ideas:

• LibX: I’ve been trying to think of ways to take our services to the customers. Of course, I’ve considered all the obvious possibilities (social networking sites, blogging, e-newsletters and so on), but, as an avid toolbar user, the idea behind LibX really appeals to me.
• del.icio.us: I love what QUT Creative Industries faculty are doing with del.icio.us tag clouds in their subject guides. I’ve been pondering this idea for a while (triggered by some work I did at the NLA on a developing core set of web links for AskNow operators using del.icio.us - the AskNow crew have done some great work populating their del.icio.us account - add them to your network!). At MPOW, we’re currently reworking our online resources interface and are about to start taking a more proactive approach to selecting free web resources for inclusion in our online resources page. I’ve been pondering del.icio.us as a means of compiling links and generating tag clouds for inclusion in the interface. Now I’ve seen QUT’s implementation, I’ve got some firmer ideas on how this might be done (eg I think we’ll need a separate account for each subject area, because I’m not sure that it’s possible to generate a tag cloud for bundles of tags).
• In-service events for ground-up implementation of L2: At the concurrent session on getting staff on board, there was a bit of discussion about the importance of direction coming from front line staff rather than administration staff. I’ve never seen my role at MPOW as an administrative one. I see it as a service-driven, user-centred role, but it suddenly occurred to me in this session that maybe other people might view it differently. I’ve tried to take a proactive approach to getting staff input and buy-in to what we’re trying to do with online services. I really, really want our online service portfolio to be driven by the needs of customers as identified by the staff they interact with on a daily basis. But am I using the right channels to engage staff? It was suggested that in-service events might be the way to go. I’d like to spend some time thinking about this idea.