Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Wiki as life ring

I am new to Librarianship. I love finding out all about this new professional cuture with its ways and means. I love the patron-centered organization of information. I am enjoying hearing from librarians of different stripes about their career paths and job responsibilities and joys. It is, however, a bit disconcerting to have to guess at the meanings of library terms and acronyms and references to professional software systems while digesting the actual point of a lecture as well. In an effort to be a part of adjusting the learning curve, I posted the following in a class discussion board. I am hoping to start a public discussion that encourages and promotes all of our class experiences.

In speaking with some other classmates who don't already have library experience, I've been thinking of ways to ease the transition for newbies into the world of Library acronyms and library-speak. Perhaps a solution for this is a remedial session on iLMS or a wiki with a glossary of sorts. It would be useful to include the names of all these library systems as well (Polaris, etc). The more basic, the better. This way, those with library experience don't wade through an explanation of every term in class, but those of us new to LibraryWorld aren't at sea and struggling to just figure out the terms.

Anyone else have input on this idea?

1 comment:

  1. I am so glad you posted that question! I've had the same problem myself and have been trying to create a glossary to keep up with the lecturers.

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