Lifelong learning

I am a big fan of being a lifelong student. If we aren't learning, we're not fulfilling our potential. I suppose one could take the "professional student" route and collect degrees and certifications in everything possible, but I think the approach to learning can be a lot simpler than that; it just involves challenging yourself to learn something new every day. That could be what a blog or RSS feed is, and how to integrate it into your library... or it could be discovering just the right amount of garlic to go in your pasta sauce while making dinner. Any new tidbit that can be used to improve yourself, personally or professionally, small or large, is fair game.

I recently received my MLIS after 3 1/2 years of courses that were primarily online, one of which involved trying out blogs, podcasting tools, social tagging networks, and other communication technologies in order to evaluate how useful they could be in a library setting. I found that I enjoyed the online courses, and in many cases, preferred them; I am very comfortable with taking responsibility for my own education. It makes turning problems and obstacles into learning experiences much easier for me, because I'm the one in charge of evaluating and solving the problem. I don't think I ever outgrew the mindset of wanting stuff to be my own idea.

In any event, I'm excited to start the "27 Things" program at my workplace, Sacramento Public Library, even though I recently did something similar. Despite being familiar with most Web 2.0 tools, there's an opportunity for learning even in the familiar (for example, the headscratching I did to make this blog look the way I wanted it to, and the consequent discovery of all the cool widgets in Blogger that I didn't know existed). Besides, there are plenty of things on the list that I've never had the opportunity to explore (Blogger actually being one of them), and it's not like I need a reason to tinker with web toys.