LIBR 246-12: Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools (Fall 2008)

1. How has your view of social software changed since starting the course? This course really opened my eyes to so much. Though I already had experience with using blogs and wikis at work, I gained a better knowledge of how they could be used with our patrons and how they can foster community through participation and interaction.

Clickers is “Personal Response Device.” Clickers is widely used for students in classrooms. Recently, students can check Clickers out from circulation desks in libraries. Some libraries use Clickers for the instructional assessments.

Here are the links regarding Clickers:

The library departmental policy guide is crucial. For example, the department is working on a project of procedure manual for the student workers on Wiki. The department forms a committee for the Wiki project. The committee has to set and follow the guidelines of the Wiki project. I believe the policies consist of two parts: library level policy and committee level policy.

I imagine that a great barrier to implementing social software is the fear of the unknown.  In a previous job, I convinced my employer to start a website to generate more clients.  The website planning meetings took absolutely forever because my boss was so frightened of the technology, and worried that her information would somehow be compromised just because we were throwing up a simple website to attract clients.  It took probably six months to get up a "quick and dirty" website.  We had plans to strengthen and add to the website, but as I write this (two years later), the original versi

I have to confess that I have wiki fever. I love creating wikis, adding pages, uploading files and images, and deciding how I want to organize the various pages and content. Over the summer the other circulation technician and I migrated our physical manual into a wiki. It gave me some great experience. As we approach accreditation in the spring, our library director is requiring the rest of the staff to create policy/procedure wikis (Oh, no! What have I started?!). Some of the staff is a little reluctant in tackling this new technology.

I love the video tutorials that we looked at this week. At my library we have a tutorial on our webpage, but it is a series of slides. I think that the videos are much more engaging than just clicking through a series of screens. I see people doing this every day--not just for the library, but for the school in general. Going through an online orientation is part of the requirements for enrollment. Boring!! It literally is just a series of screens that you read and answer questions about. You print out your quiz results at the end.

I came across this slideshow by David Free of the Association of College and Research Libraries from August 2007. He does talk about some of the same podcasts Meredith covers, but I still found his content informative. You can check it out here: http://www.slideshare.net/dwfree/podcasting-and-vodcasting-in-academic-libraries/

For those of you who may not know it, there's a lot of great art in the Pasadena City College Shatford Library. In cooperation with Sandra Haynes, Art Department Professor, the Library created podcasts discussing the Artist in Residence program. You can explore the art and listen to the podcasts here: http://www.pasadena.edu/air/index.html 

I love the idea of having information to go. With podcasts, libraries can avail themselves of a great tool. In thinking about how they can be used at my library, I feel that it would be a great way for us to market new resources and services. Right now we are doing a trial of Safar Textbooks and Learning Express Library. There is only a link to them at the bottom of our homepage. With a podcast, students could download and hear about the latest library news. We also have an exhibit in our main entrance that came from NASA, but in looking at our website, you wouldn't even know it.

Google Settles Book Suits to Expand Online Publishing

Well that makes the one virtual library that much easier now I suppose.

Imagine what kind of money Google has to spend over $130 million upfront? In addition, they only get to keep a third. Now if they can avoid an antitrust suit (like what happened to ATT), Google is line to take on Microsoft I think...