Thing 8: Video

Here's a video I created and posted on YouTube about a year ago. Each year during Poetry Blitz Week, the library sponsors a poetry reading. Faculty and students come to the library to read a favorite poem, or a poem that they've written themselves. As you can see, they sometimes bring props (see the hedgehog).

Another video is of Kingsley Greene, our library director, and Susan Scrimshaw, president of The Sage Colleges. The video was taken during the dedication of the library café, known as Hazel's Café, which was named after an alumna, Hazel Bode, who bequeathed money to the college for library renovations. I used iMovie to create the video, complete with music, slide transitions, and special effects. I had fun creating this even though it's just an amateur video. I am sure there are lots of events in the library that I could record and post on YouTube.

Thing #7

Productivity and Collaboration Tools

The two productivity tools I ended up exploring were Google Calendar and Google Docs.

First, Google Calendar because I think it would be great to have calendars for both of our library campuses in one location. We have a library staff calendar for vacations, meetings, etc. on CampusCruiser, our college e-mail system, but I don’t think it has all the features that Google Calendar offers. I am thinking we could create calendars for the reference desk schedule, and student circulation assistants’ schedule. For the media room reservations, we have a binder that we keep at the circulation desk to jot down the reservations. Faculty or students call in or walk up to the desk if they wish to reserve a room. Sharing the calendars would be easy because anyone with the link could view the calendar online to see if there’s an available time slot even before making the phone call. An easier option is if you want to make all of your calendar information (including event details) available to the world, all you would do so click the “Make this calendar public” button. For sharing with specific people, you would just add each person’s e-mail address and choose their permissions settings—whether or not you want them to edit the calendar or just be able to view it.  The calendar help menu is a good place to start in getting started on how to create, customize, organize, and share calendars.

Google Docs: I have been playing with the idea of creating an online form for librarians to submit their book orders. This is a really good tool that I could use in acquisitions because each librarian has his or her own way of submitting book orders. I created a form a couple of years ago, but it never really took off. The idea was for librarians to use the online form to submit their book orders (title, author, ISBN, publisher, publication date, edition, campus, shelving location, fund ID, price, and any special notes). Using the responses that would be saved in a spreadsheet, I could then go ahead and create the order information in our catalog. Google provides lots of templates to choose from, so reinventing the wheel is not necessary. For security, I can specify that the form be available only to anyone with the link. This is still a work in progress, but it’s a lot of fun customizing the form, and doing test runs. Documentation on Google Docs can be found here: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/search/label/forms/

Thing 6 : Online Meetings

Diving into Digital Books: Adding eReaders to Your Library, May 2^nd, 2011.

I attended this archived webinar and found it to be as convenient as attending a live webinar.  Many thanks to Polly who sent me the archived link; I was able to download and install the Elluminate Live! Software on my

MacBook Pro while lying in bed and my laptop on my lap—where else? The process was very easy and seamless. The audio was good, and there were no sound issues. At one point, I was able to pause the program for a short break and continue where I left off. It was and hour-long webinar with a brief answer and question session at the end.  There were 135 participants and a little pop-up window kept appearing every time a participant joined the webinar. On the left panel of the screen, there was a little window where you could view chat sessions and comments from the participants. In the middle of the screen were slides that corresponded to the presenter’s topic. They were very engaging and kept my attention throughout the program. Even though this was an archived webinar, it's as if I was attending it live. The only disadvantage was that if I had any questions, I wasn't able to ask them.

Compared to attending an in-person meeting, I think this is very good. If you don’t have the funds for travel, or cannot attend due to scheduling problems, an archived webinar is the next best alternative. I have attended webinars before, and I think I will continue to attend as many free ones as time allows in order to keep up with my library skills.

Thing #5: Reflection & Catch Up Week

So far, so good. I don't think there's been an assignment that was too difficult to complete. I am now totally addicted to Google Reader and I would never have known about it until the assignment on RSS feeds. I am going to make an effort to visit and comment on other participants' blogs. I think if we all do this, we can learn a lot from each other.

Thing 4 : Online Communities

Well, I finally have a moment to complete this assignment. Our library is pretty much connected to the whole social networking scene. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and we have a Flickr pro account. Unfortunately, our web librarian recently rearranged our library homepage and removed the icons for Facebook and Twitter. Our Facebook page is pretty static, and there's not much content. However, our Twitter account is active with over 200 followers. With all the changes lately, I think it will be a lot easier to update all the social networking sites in one fell swoop. You could possibly load pictures of events in Flickr, blog about it, and then send the link to Facebook! If patrons are interested in our library services, they can always go to our website, or call the reference desk.

On a personal level, I am on Facebook and Goodreads. I also have a LinkedIn account and recently joined Twitter. I know, I said I had no interest in joining Twitter, but I gave in and joined. I'm currently following 15 tweeters. I don't see how it would be useful to me. It seems like information overload. I can see how valuable it would be to follow the news or the latest Amazon deals. I also resisted joining Facebook for a long time. I used to post updates, but lately have fallen off the grid. I have friends who are on there constantly. I only use it to see what my kids are up to and to keep in touch with family and friends who are out of state and out of the country.