6 Years of 23 Things

It's been six years ago this month since I created and launched the 23 Things program while I was at Charlotte Mecklneburg Library.   Although the time has gone by fast, it still blows my mind away at just how far and  vast reaching this program has had on the library community world wide.   Even now, years later I still get emails almost weekly from library staff requesting permission to duplicate or asking questions about the program.   This past week I heard from a colleague that the program has been highlighted at IFLA and through another program done by the Oxford University Libraries in England. 

I've long lost the ability to track the number of programs replicated worldwide.  For a while,  I had unknown benefactor who kept up with the program for the first year or so via a google map. But once Minerva Shelved (the alias for someone I still don't know who thank or attribute to) stopped adding links, I only had a rough Delicious tag to keep up with the global growth.

Occasionally, whenever someone sends me an email or link to a new program, I still tag in my old Delicious account.  The tag is up to 487 individual programs at the moment, with many of the programs designed to support multiple libraries and/or multiple library systems.   At  one time I  had officially counted that the program had been replicated in 15 different languages and if I tried to count all the national and state library run programs done all over the globe, the impact was easliy somewhere around 700+ orgnaizations.

Here's a few links about IFLA programs that talked about 23 Things:

• Info Literacy Blog: 23 Things as Transformative Learning
• 23 Things Oxford University Libraries

Yup, even after 6 years, the impact of this program worldwide still amazes me !