Discovery Learning 2.0

Helene Blowers, Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in North Carolina is creating a lot of excitement across the nation in the academic, public, and school librarian communities. One strong message that librarians keep hearing is to "jump in" and start using blogs, wikis, podcasts, and so on -- and to have fun doing it. Helene created a nine week staff development program to get all library employees up to speed on web 2.0 tools. Discovery Learning 2.0 was voluntary, had no cost to participants or to the library, and was an outstanding success.

A collaboration of San Jose Public Libraries and San Jose State University Library (sjlibrary.org) is doing the same. This is only the beginning of a wave that will sweep libraryland.