While the land of Del.icio.us clouds had been quite interesting, it was time for me to move on. It seemed as if I would never get out of Bloggerland. Just as I was shaking the trails of puffy wisps from my feet and clothing, I came across another curious sight. It was a large garden filled with towers of books, literature and manuscripts alongside rose bushes and leafy vines. The stacks were so tall that you could hardly see anything of the purple-blue sky.
In the middle of the sky-high heaps sat a caterpillar (or was it a bookworm?) at a small desk. She was furiously tapping away at the keyboard of a desktop computer. I walked closer and asked
"Who are you?"
She suddenly looked up at me over her rose-rimmed, diamante-encrusted glasses.
“Who ARE you?!” she boomed. Then she blushed, which made her blue cheeks turn purple. “Oh I am sorry, where are my manners, I mean how can I help you?” She smiled encouragingly.
“Well, I am trying to find my way through Bloggerland, hopefully gathering some new knowledge and skills before I leave. By the way, how do I leave? And what exactly are you doing?”
“Well, that is really two questions. Firstly, to leave Bloggerland you must complete all set activities and meet all pre-ordained, un-plagiarised characters. You will know when you are ready. As for me, I am slamming the boards of course.”
The bookworm/caterpillar then proceeded to explain what “slamming the boards” was and why she was doing it, as well as other tools that libraries could use to further expand their customer base, promote the usage of library services and allow customers to actively participate in information presented about library collections. After pondering these ideas i exclaimed:
“Why, board slamming is a great idea! It enables people who are used to getting instantaneous answers from random people to get a little piece of reliable information to come to them, even if they aren’t willing to go to it. And in future they may realise that the library is a good place to find answers, just like I have here today! On a smaller scale individual libraries can provide a similar service, and some have already, where people can ask questions and know that a librarian can at least give them a basic, trustworthy answer. It is also more likely to be a researched answer rather than based on experience or opinion, yet sometimes people might be actually looking for personal anecdotes, depending on the request of course.
“And I especially like the idea of people being able to comment and add to a library catalogue for example. It would be great if you could look up a book, see how many other people have read it, read any opinions on the text, refer to any related links, and see any similar books and what other books people have also read or recommended to read. Similar to Amazon or Taste, you could observe recipe/book satisfaction, and instead of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”, you could replace bought with borrowed. It would be another way to share and expand our knowledge base, both of the customers and staff.”
The caterpillar/bookworm smiled again.
“Very good! And now you see it is time for you to move on. You’ve finished this task, and you’re almost at your journey’s end.”
And with that, she disappeared in a puff of golden smoke.
*Cough* Cough* Goodness! Hmm… maybe I am getting somewhere at last. Onwards from here!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment