Wordle
Thank you Wordle for giving me a visual representation of my blog. I am currently rekindling my love for Wordle. I know it’s not new, but just thought I’d remind everyone how cool it is!
One down!
Tuesday of this past week was my first time giving a presentation at my new job. Every Tuesday during the noon hour my floor presents half hour sessions on topics we feel are of interest to our users and that also help to promote the library. I presented on Twitter. Specifically what is twitter, why would you want to use it, followed by an overview of how to set up an account and how to use your account once it is set up.
This was my first time giving a presentation of this nature. While preparing I thought “wow! I have half an hour to talk about Twitter – how am I possibly going to fill up my time?”. Clearly I did not have any reference point as to how long these sorts of presentations can take! Half an hour is definitely NOT enough time to cover all that I wanted to cover in an introductory Twitter presentation.
My major oversight was not completely understanding the knowledge level of my audience . The audience at a public library, in general, has an extremely limited knowledge of technology and concepts that I would consider basic, such as how to use the internet. This was highlighted to me when the first question that was asked during the presentation was how to get to the Twitter homepage. It is a tough balance trying to determine what is too basic to discuss in a presentation versus what is too complex. This balance will be determined in time, but for now I know that it is necessary for me to take a step back and start at a very basic level and move up from there.
Because I had incorrectly assumed a level of knowledge from my audience I was not able to cover all aspects of Twitter that I feel are important. Most of my time was spent showing how to set up an account and how to find and follow other people. I was barely able to touch on hashtags and searching for topics that you might be interested in.
The great thing about this session was that it was extremely well attended compared with other sessions my floor has offered. And the audience that was there to learn about Twitter was engaged, they asked questions and were genuine in their wanting to understand and engage with Twitter.
On a personal note it was nice to have completed a presentation as now I feel much more comfortable thinking about preparing others. I also got very positive feedback from the audience and my managers so even though I felt it could have gone much better, the people who were there looking for information got what they were looking for. And that’s really all I can ask for.
Sad day for Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
Today I read a very sad LibraryJournal article – Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is facing large cuts to their budget which will result in the closing of 12 of 24 branches and 140 staff layoffs.
I had the good fortune last month to attend a presentation at the Calgary Public Library by a librarian from Charlotte Mecklenburg who works in their ImaginOn Library location. It’s a truly unique library branch responsible for creating innovative children’s library programming. The article mentions that ImaginOn is not safe from the layoffs, but for Charlotte Mecklenburg I hope it remains untouched so they can continue on with their forward thinking programming and share their ideas with the rest of us librarians!
Social Media + Your Library
I have been thinking a lot about the effective use of social media within libraries. I recently started a new position and have walked into an organization that is attempting to actively engage in the use of a variety of social media tools to reach out to library users. While this is currently happening, I feel that the organization could use a more effective strategy. The current strategy is well….there is no strategy. Lacking a strategy means as an organization we are haphazardly contributing to a variety of communities without a consistent voice or message. Which in turn defeats the purpose of engaging (in my opinion) and also does not provide us with a way of actually determining if what we are doing is sincerely making any sort of difference.
The current situation looks something like the following. Several departments have set up their own Twitter accounts – yet the naming of these accounts does not necessarily indicate what organization they are from or whether or not they are related at all. The accounts appear to primarily, if not only, be used as a method of pushing information – there is no interaction between the account holder and followers.
Each department has their own blog, or space whatever you choose to call it. All using different size fonts, with different layouts. There doesn’t appear to be much of a template…and it kind of drives me nuts.I could go on but it would be too boring.
The spider web of social media interactions currently taking place has made me realise the value of an organization articulating a social media policy before things get out of hand. The ease in which social media can be used is one of its greatest assets, but it’s also one of its greatest downfalls if it’s not regulated in some manner. Encouraging active engagement with social media tools while ensuring there are principles to follow in order to provide a cohesive organizational message without constraining staff members (as that would defeat the point of using social media) is something I hope to help my organization strive for.
Does your library use social media? If so what do you use? Do you have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Flickr page, Youtube channel….or something else?
Is there a policy for employees who use social media in their personal lives? Is there a policy for employees using social media while representing the organization?
My Mom on the interwebs!
Last November my Mom and Dad went on their first cruise ever. Their destination – Antarctica!! Why you ask? Because my Mom won the trip through the Doctor’s Review Magazine. You can read about their experience in my Mom’s article in the latest Doctor’s Review here.
Knowledge Sharing
As noted in my previous post, the other day when I was having epic problems trying to figure out how to post a Jing video to wordpress.com and I tweeted about my problem. Dave, a lovely Education Evangelist (I so want that job title!) from TechSmith Corporation answered my call for help via Twitter. We exchanged a few emails back and forth and Dave was extremely helpful although he and I were unable to solve my problem. I solved my problem by the help of lovely people in the wordpress forum (see post below) and then passed on the info on to Dave. Subsequently Dave was able to upgrade my free Jing account to a pro account, for free, and then wrote a blog post about my solution!
This experience has confirmed my belief in Twitter as an excellent medium for social networking and knowledge sharing! Also what excellent customer service I got from Jing! Other companies could sure learn a thing or two from my experience!
iTunes Tutorial for Mom!
First and foremost I must say that I got this idea from my friend Monica because she made a video for her mom about how to set up a gmail account. Thanks for the great idea Monica!
Below is a video tutorial I made for my mother to help her import her CDs into iTunes. I used the free version of Jing to make this video. This is my first attempt at creating a video tutorial using this software and I would have to say that overall Jing was very easy to use! There are a few mess ups in the video where I use such weird words as “importation” and I don’t fully explain the organization of iTunes appropriately. I acknowledge that importation sounds weird and that I haven’t fully elaborated on the organization of iTunes – but I posted it anyways because I believe that it gets the message across! I just had to put in this disclaimer in case someone was watching this and though “wait a minute, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about!”. The sound quality also varies throughout the video due to the fan on my computer turning on while importing the CD, and that all the windows in my apartment are open allowing a variety of typical Toronto construction sounds to make an appearance.
The only problem I ran into was figuring out how exactly to post this to my blog. I tried for several hours and each time was unsuccessful. I posted a question in the wordpress forum to see if anyone could help me with my problem and was told that .swf files are not permitted on wordpress.com, the most basic version, for security reasons. I followed the suggestion from the forum and used the vodpod firefox extension and was successful in posting to my blog. The only downside of this is that the size of the video makes it somewhat harder to see, however it is embedded nicely.
For a larger version of this video you can click here to see the version hosted on Screencast.
