LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

I'm really amazed that the class is over. It went much more quickly than I'd expected. I know I've said it before, but I really couldn't have asked for a better group of students. Your enthusiasm was inspiring to me and your reflections helped me to see many of these tools and ideas in new ways. Yes, teachers can learn from their students. :)

Are you going to ALA?

Sorry folks! I just noticed that I put the wrong dates for Week 15, which probably led to a bunch of you scrambling to finish your final reflection blog post. Please note that that last blog post is not due until NEXT Tuesday (the 13th), though obviously if you just want to be done, you can certainly write it up now. The same goes for your Experience Report from the Final Project. While I'd like to get it from you sooner than later, you can take until Tuesday to get it done. You can just send the experience report to me in the body of an email. It definitely doesn't need to be formal.

Tuesday evening's the big night for you all!

For those of you who may not already know, there is a SLISsers wiki for SJSU's LIS program where students can share knowledge about the program. It's so great for online learners to have a community like this where newbies can benefit from the knowledge of seasoned veterans like you. :)

I wanted to highlight Melissa's excellent post about some of the barriers many of us have and will likely face when we try to "sell" social software in our library. She brings up some of the common objections people have to social software tools in a work setting and how to combat them.

If you feel like you want to practice your presentation for the group project in Elluminate before our session next week, you can contact our Elluminate assistant Michele Martin who said she'd be glad to do one-on-one practice sessions. Her email address is listed on this forum page.

Hope the group project planning is going well and feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Jami Haskell, who worked on the social software policy at the Washoe County Library (one of the policy examples this week), wrote an article for WebJunction on how to "Create a Social Software Policy for Your Library." It's a good, brief practical article which discusses why they decided to create a policy and how they did it. Definitely worth taking a look at if you're thinking of creating a policy or are on the fence about the need to do so.

I thought I should share an experience my friend Amanda had the other day when she was trying to access the wiki for a workgroup she's a part of. This is a great example of why we have to be careful when choosing technologies hosted by an external company:

The SOTES (Survey of Teaching Effectiveness) are coming up soon! For those who don't know, this is a survey that examines your satisfaction with the class and my teaching.