Infotoday Blog

ITI Bloggers October 31st, 2007

Barbara Fullerton, Sabrini Pacifici, and Aaron Schmidt gave their always popular gadgets session at an evening session tonight.  Copies of their PowerPoint slides with the details of the gadgets will be on Aaron’s and Sabrini’s blogs as well as the conference presentations website shortly.  A new feature of their presentation was the special inclusion of some eco-friendly gadgets. 

Following the gadget part of the session, a team from the Delft Public Library in the Netherlands presented a series of short videos illustrating best practices in various libraries that they visited on a road trip from New York to Monterey.  The video sketches will be combined in a documentary they are creating.  You can see the clips and the complete documentary (when it is ready) on their website.

As usual, the evening session was entertaining and punctuated by lots of laughter, and a good time was had by all.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator

Here is a list of the gadgets that were described by Barbara, Sabrini, and Aaron:

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ITI Bloggers October 31st, 2007

The Tuesday afternoon street market in Monterey was, as usual, intriguing and fascinating–another reason why Monterey is such a great location for Internet Librarian.  (If you didn’t make it this year, plan to come next year–the conference is booked for Monterey for the next four years.)

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator

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ITI Bloggers October 31st, 2007

(L-R) Rebecca Jones, Session Moderator; Kathy Petlewski; Evette Atkin

How far afield do your training courses go?  Just your own library?  All the libraries in the city or the region?  How about doing training for an entire state?  Well, if your state is Rhode Island or Delaware, it might not be too difficult to get an audience of librarians or users from around the state together.  But what if your state is Alaska? Or Hawaii where the state extends across several islands?  Even in a medium-sized state like Michigan, it can take 9 hours to drive from one end to the other.  The only way to do effective statewide training in such a situation is to use distance learning technologies.

Evette Atkin, Network Librarian and Training Consultant, Michigan Library Consortium and Kathy Petlewski, Electronic Resources Librarian, Plymouth District Library, have created some innovative distance learning courses using Moodle, a free open source software platform, and Second Life.  They use Moodle for training on the databases accessible through the Michigan Electronic Library.  Each course consists of an introductory lesson and a practice module, and then a quiz.  The students can go back after the quiz and review those parts where they need further training.  For the general public, courses are offered on database basics and health information, and for library staff, a variety of specialized courses (including one on bookbinding) are available.

The Centra software platform, an online learning environment using virtual training, is also used in real time.  The instructor can interact remotely with the students by audio or text chat and can offer feedback and help as needed.

In 2006, Michigan Electronic Library put a building on Second Life’s Information Island, and it proved so successful that they now have a 4,000 square meter site.

Offering statewide training courses is not as difficult as it was formerly, thanks to today’s social networking and Web2.0 tools.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator

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ITI Bloggers October 30th, 2007

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Track C today, 2.0 Organizations & Roles. Good stuff.

After a funny tongue-in-cheek talk about "how to lose your new tech librarian" (fav tip: You shouldn’t hop on a tech trend until it’s ready to die, even tho your techie suggested it a year ago.), there were lots of practical training tips. Trouble is, in order to do all the training the right way, you must have an organizational culture that supports it. Too bad that’s not always the case. As soon as I find out how to easily change admins’ minds about supporting proper  training, PR, and lifelong learning, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, do the best you can.

More tips and tactics from Track C  later!

~Kathy Dempsey

CIL & MLS Editor

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ITI Bloggers October 30th, 2007

Training professionals in high technology companies raises its own set of issues, as outlined by Karen Draper, Sr. Information Specialist at Adobe Systems, Inc.  She noted that innovative ideas need informamtion to help them turn into products or services.  The pace in a technology environment is fast; employees work fast and need information even faster. They face too much information and tend to shut thier minds to getting even more.  Draper developed several personas of various types of professionals in her environment:  product managers, engineers, marketing managers, sales people, interns, and directors.  See her presentation for the details. 

Adobe also offers a range of training classes to teach employees how to use information services; these are given using web conferencing technology.  I found it interesting that students are encouraged to bring their own laptops to the classes, even when they are physically present in the classroom so that they can try the techniques as they are presented to them.  Social networking tools like blogs, wikis, and folksonomies (all behind the firewall) are also used for training.

The Adobe scenario shows how Web2.0 technologies can be used to advantage in a fast paced, high energy technical environment and is a useful model to follow.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator

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ITI Bloggers October 30th, 2007

I walked outside during one of the breaks and found this delightful display of "antique" cars.  (Well, some of them were truly antique, but others just made me feel old!  Notice the photo of the 1956 Volkswagen–after I told the owner that the first car I owned was the same model, he kindly let me sit in it.)

If you would like to see all of the pictures I took, click "Continue Reading" below. 

Enjoy!

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today, and IL2007 Blog Coordinator

Continue Reading »

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ITI Bloggers October 30th, 2007

Attendees had many questions for the presenters (L-R) Lori Bell, Shawn McCann, and Jeremy Kamp

One track of an entire day was devoted to virtual worlds like Second Life and how they are being used in libraries.  A show of hands by the audience revealed that such usage is becoming fairly widespread, and the presentations will certainly do much to increase the penetration of virtual worlds in libraries.  According to Lori Bell, Director of Innovation at the Alliance Library System, virtual world technology has become a new frontier for libraries and librarianship.  Second Life is attracting new users to traditional libraries through referral.  And librarians like Second Life because it’s fun!  The Alliance Second Life group on Google now has 600 members, and its virtual welcome and information center, staffed for 80 hours a week, answers over 200 questions weekly.

An interesting new trend is the establishment of positions in conventional libraries to investigate and develop virtual world technology.  Shawn McCann from McMaster University suggested that a suitable title for such staffers would be “gaming librarian”, and his job is typical.  Besides normal library duties, he explores games and virtual worlds and their intersection with higher education as well as devising ways for the library to support games and virtual worlds.  If you think this is a way to disguise the fact that he spends a large part of his day playing video games (and getting paid for it!), you’re right.

Why are these trends happening?  Formerly reactive libraries are becoming proactive and embracing new technology.  Games and virtual worlds have become important to higher education, and there is lots of research now available.  And, perhaps most important, gaming is an important part of student culture and has been widely adopted.  (For an article with market research data on gaming, see this report.

Shawn’s wish list for supporting gaming and virtual worlds includes a “gaming laboratory” with the powerful hardware needed to support this technology.  He also would like to offer a gaming collection of books and reports to his users.  And the best way that libraries can support this technology is to do what we do best.

Shawn was followed by Jeremy Kemp, Assistant Director of the Second Life Campus of San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science.  SJSU acquired a 16 acre island in  Second Life and developed a virtual campus.  He showed a fascinating video of an interview produced by the local radio station KQED, which explored the campus.  This is the next generation of distance learning and gives students the advantages of not needing to come to the campus but still have the feeling of a campus environment.  Participating professors have found that the education experience is enhanced; if they want to hold a class at the (virtual) beach, it’s no problem!  Jeremy also referred to an IBM report, Leadership in a Distributed World, which provides much helpful information on virtual world technologies.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator

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