Catchup week, and some reflections

This week is catchup week - and I am soooo glad of it. It has allowed me a chance to finish and upload some of my blog posts, and to do a little more playing around with a couple of apps that I particularly like.
So, after 6 weeks of learning & playing, what do I know now that I didn't before I started the program?

• I know a lot more than I thought I did. Only a couple of the things have been completely new to me - even Vine (which I had never installed or played with before) was vaguely familiar because of the chatter when it was introduced. And that's good. 
• Most of them have been pretty easy to instal and play with without ever reading or viewing any introductory material. And that's very good!
• There are a lot more things that can be done with most of these apps than I had thought. There are many incredibly creative people out there using these apps to connect with their community - I particularly liked some of the YouTube examples that were shared. 
• It can be overwhelming when trying to use many of these apps. By this I mean that to do some of  them well, you need to put in the time to learn them and to learn the possibilities associated with them. For individuals, this can be a case of trying things and discarding them if they don't bring the benefits that we were expecting. But for organisations (in particular libraries) this input of time can be a big impost. We need to be willing to try and discard if something doesn't work, but resourcing may not be available for more than one or two social media forays. ROI needs to be considered by each library before committing too much (although the idea of starting off small and regularly reviewing seems most appropriate). 
• The take-up of apps varies with different client groups - some are likely to be more interested in specific apps (local history buffs and HistoryPin), but others will stick with something like Facebook that meets most of their current needs. And that's fine, but something to be considered when looking at what each organisation should be involved in. We need to be in touch with our community enough to know (or at least guess at) what will be of ongoing interest.