Thing 10 -- Ning

I have been super busy and out of the loop for a while--finishing graduate school (I now have a Master's Degree in Library Science), moving (with no Internet access for several weeks), hosting family from out of town (the day after we moved--there are still boxes everywhere), etc... But now I am back and I'm ready to finish up my 23 Things! I have a lot of catching up to do, but I think I can handle it.

I briefly checked out Ning a while back when this Thing was first posted. Today, I came back to it, and some stuff popped up that I didn't remember from before. The Library 2.0 network seemed pretty cool. I really wanted to look at the slide show that Dr. Cho posted, but I don't have the new version of Power Point. Some of the commentary was interesting. I think I'll definitely have to come back to this one periodically.

The ALA network on Ning is not active anymore now that they have their own social networking site now. Go to http://connect.ala.org/ to see what they are up to now. I don't know if I'll join it, and I didn't join the Ning network because there's only so much time in the day. I already belong to a few social networks, and I don't know if I can handle many more!

The Librarians network had a useful thread when a person asked about helping library users develop reading habits. Only one person responded, but he had a list of helpful links related to the topic. It seems like these networks would be good ways to brainstorm and bounce ideas off of other professionals.

The last network I looked into was African Village Libraries. I did not get very far browsing that network because I'm not a member, but the link to the blog was interesting and close to my heart. I studied abroad in Ghana, West Africa back in 2003. A community school in my town collected book donations for a school they sponsor in Adafianu, a small fishing village in the Volta region. Each of the students took a box of books and packed it into our luggage. We walked with the villagers as they carried entire encyclopedia sets on their heads back to the small room with no shelves that would eventually become the school library. At that time, I didn't know that I would go back to school to become a school librarian, but I think it planted a seed. When I saw the village children eagerly scanning the stacks of new books, I knew that getting books into the hands of children is a very noble thing, indeed. Maybe some day I will make it back to an African Village and help with the library cause there.