Friday, May 30, 2008

Libraries and Blogs

Thank you, friends at the library, for the opportunity to talk with you today about ways we might incorporate blogs into the library website to offer more services to your patrons. From our conversation, I learned that there are several content areas of your website that you would like to add or enhance.

Specifically, you would like to:

  1. Enhance instruction to include an orientation for new students, guide to resources, tutorials and documentation for education on topics such as plagerism and scholarly journals.
  2. Enhance Library News and Happenings
  3. Provide introduction of Library Staff, their roles and expertise
  4. Add new content such as driving directions, what's new, and items for sale

As we discussed, there are many new tools that will allow you to incorporate these features into your website. Blogs, wikis, text/chat, and screencasts being the most relevant. Since time was limited, our focus was on reviewing how blogs are being used by Libraries across the country. In future meetings, I hope that we will learn how to use the blog tools that we have available to us.

Below are several applications of blogs created by other libraries that we reviewed. Please take a look at these and post your comments here. Each of you have a different perspective, and perhaps, goals you would like to achieve, so, let's include them here. This will help us continue our dialog and work toward implementation of these new services.

In addition to blogs, there are so many areas to explore. Depending on your preference, we'll do this again and focus next on creating blogs using the tools we have available or on learning about how wikis can be used. I might suggest that next session cover wikis. This is because wikis are the most logical tool for creating and distributing your instructional materials which is your highest priority. You just let me know when and where and I'll start working on pulling some information together.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to work with such an enthusiastic group. Thanks!

Lisa

Monday, May 5, 2008

IT Problems

Humorous video on what causes so many problems with technology. Sometimes, I have to agree there are gremlins and goblins inside my computer!


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/apr/30/dragons.den.gremlins.bt

from Steve Clark, Webmaster, Athens State University