I didn’t really intend to take the time off between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but that’s how it worked out.

Here, one day late, is my personal wrap-up of 2005.

Blogs

I started this blog back in August, and so far the experience has lived up to my expectations. I haven’t posted as often as I’d like in recent weeks, but I have high hopes for 2006. If my statistics are any indication (and they should be–that’s their job!), I’m building a small but growing readership. I’m grateful to you all for reading this, and I welcome your comments and criticism.

This was a big year for blogging at my library. At Tutt Library, we purchased Movable Type and got our book review blog, Bookends, back online. I also set up a blog for my director’s Library Program Committee, and put our library news page in blog format.

Social software

del.icio.us

I started using del.icio.us in earnest one year ago. Now I have over one thousand bookmarks, and find it hard to imagine life online without it. I bookmark and tag just about anything that catches my attention online, knowing I’ll eventually want to find it again.

Flickr

I had a Flickr account for many months before I did anything with it. Once I go the hang of it, though, I started using my personal Flickr account for family photos, as it is easier and more fun than assembling the kind of “gallery” pages I had been using for the past few years. Then I got Tutt Library set up with an account that we are using to show off our new coffee cart, photos of the library, our holiday party, and, of course, librarian trading cards.

pbwiki

Our reference department set up a wiki this year that should eventually replace our reference manual; people were more enthusiastic about the wiki than I thought they would be, and now it looks like the wiki will take over our whole intranet. We are using pbwiki, which is very easy to use. It also sets up a private, password-protected wiki by default, which was what we wanted. (I blogged this before.)

Library Thing

My other favorite social software application of the year is Library Thing, which I have also blogged before. I expect to upgrade to a paid account there soon. (BTW, I finished two more books–On Beauty by Zadie Smith and Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion–before the end of the year, brining my total to 23. Pretty bad (the total, not the books).)

Conferences

Internet Librarian

This was my first year at Internet Librarian, and it lived up to my high expectations. I blogged it like a dead horse, met all the bloggers I’d hoped to meet (and started some lasting friendships and conversations, too). A blast.

CAL

I helped plan the program for this year’s Colorado Association of Libraries meeting in Denver, and made my first ever conference presentation, Teach an Old Blog New Tricks, there.

Real life

Offline, away from work, came the biggest and most important event of my year: the birth of my son, Nicholas in June. My older son, Luke, has done an admirable job of adjusting to no longer being the baby of the family. I’m still trying to adjust to being the father of two.