So Much Knowledge!

As I look around the room at the knowledge spill that has just occurred in my LIS629 classroom, my heart goes out to the poor trapped souls in the informational sludge that has consumed the surrounding landscape, but it is all AWESOME. Unlike those unfortunate marine creatures on the coast our own knowledge spill will inevitably make us stronger.

I can't help but liken it to the story my grandfather told me about his first experience in learning to swim, in which he was pushed off a dock and told to swim. Fortunately we have an exceptional guru to guide us through the muck and give us direction (directions: helpful in computers, swimming, and cooking). A lot of the information today can be overwhelming at first glance, but as users grow accustom to it they will without a doubt begin to play and explore and that is where the real learning will happen. Hopefully they will share their discoveries on blogs, twitter, or anything and more importantly I hope to be a part of their friend-list to learn about that innovation myself (“Must Grow PLN…”).

The helpfulness in Web2.0 and Library2.0 ideas and theories really become strong as the community becomes stronger. So many scientific ideas have stemmed from this idea of community knowledge on a whole. Just like a bee hives these PLNs of the internet grow in strength flexibility and determination as each person enters into them. Ultimately I find these networks to be an incredibly groundbreaking endeavor in expanding the abilities of everyone involved in them, with so much expert knowledge at hand it seems that each person can glean the best aspects of each member and become closer to the ideal librarian that we seek to be and that libraries seek to have.