The Happiness Advantage

I’m currently half way through The Happiness Advantage:  The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor.  This book has really made me think about what makes me happy and how to continue to be happy personally and professionally.  I think we could all use some happiness after the Joomla stress.  

Some tips that I want to share with everyone include…

• It takes 3 positive comments, experiences, or expressions in order to overcome one negative.

• Change your mind set about how you mentally define tasks in order to change your performance on those tasks.  View things as an opportunity instead of a waste of your time.

• Doubt undercuts your performance before it even begins.

• The more you believe in yourself and in your abilities the more likely you will succeed.

• The more you believe in others and their potential the more likely they will succeed.

• Our brains follow patterns so train your brain to think positively and find the silver lining in every scenario.  Instead of thing it is hot outside, think how pretty the blue sky is.

Wiki Wiki Wiki

I have never thought or heard about a library having a wiki page, but I guess that is what this class is all about.  Learning new Web 2.0 technologies and how we can apply them to libraries.  That being said, I am going to use my college library as my field site for this wiki assignment.

East Georgia State College is an access institution with strong ties to the community.  We are a four-year state college, although most of our programs are two-year degrees.  The library serves a student population of approximately 2,800 students, traditional and non-traditional, as well as community members.  Our budget for the year is under $80,000 for everything from database subscriptions to supplies, so there is no such thing as money to spare.  The library is also staffed by four full time employees and a few student workers during the semester so job duties are generally shared among employees.  All of this means that the goal of the library wiki will be to make the jobs of the employees easier and not more difficult.  The wiki page will be a one-stop shop for information that is commonly requested by students and college employees.  There are many pieces of information that are spread over the college website that can benefit from being in one central location.  The wiki can also host information about little known about library services that are available on campus; like course reserves or GILFind.

I selected the following requirements for my library wiki using the Wiki Choice Wizard. 

1) A page history so that older versions are saved and a record of editors is kept.

2) What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) because it is easier for non-tech savvy users, so everyone has a fair chance at creating and updating content.

3)  Software that is hosted by another party because we do not have the server space for it, as well as unlimited bandwidth and storage space.

4) Our own unique domain name and the ability to incorporate college branding into the page so that 

it looks similar to other college pages.

5) Options to include a calendar, image gallery, forum, and blogs as deemed necessary.

… All of these factors lead me to choose PBwiki.

Background Check - Line one

Salutations to my loyal followers!

As you may have figured out my now my name is Tia and I am a graduate student in the Master of Library and Information Sciences program at Valdosta State University.  I began this program in fall of 2013 and will graduate this fall after I complete 3 more courses.  I began my library-land journey in 2005 with a part time after school job at a local public library and upgraded to a full time academic position in 2012.  I have loved working in different libraries and hope to turn this work into a career.

I am excited yet cautious as we jump into the deep end of the social media and Web 2.0 technologies pool.  I actually Googles a list of Web 2.0 technologies and discovered that I am familiar with more items than I thought; maybe not individual apps or programs, but the idea or larger picture behind each.  I have personally worked with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, and very recently Periscope and Twitter.  I do not consider myself an expert at any of the above programs, but I dabble quite a bit.

I expect this course to go very quickly and include many long nights reading the computer screen and posting updates.  I hope to learn more about Web 2.0 technologies that exist and how to use them to my advantage.  This is happening already with our first set of assigned readings.  I believe we will all learn things that we can apply to our personal life as well as our professional one.  Are you with me fellow MLIS7505 students as we venture into the exciting yet packed next 3 weeks of our lives?

CHARGE (your laptops and cell phones)  J