Librarian By Day

I have a couple of Zigtag.com invites to give away. Holler if you want one, leave a comment or send me an email. 

I haven’t really played with it yet, seems to be a bit like twine.com, but only works in FireFox. 

Several people have asked me to share the classes I’m creating for the Patrons.  I’m doing half of the series, a coworker is doing the other half, so you’ll only be seeing half the lessons.

The first one is Introduction to Blogging.  It’s geared towards, beginners, people don’t really know much about blogs or blogging.  I’ll cover some information about blogs then have them set up up if they like.  I’ve also put together a handout to accompany it. 

I’ll be teaching this next month so I’ll let you know how it goes. 

The laptops are here! I snuck in early this morning to sneak a picture of one of them.  Dont’ tell Robin! ;)  Yes all 15 are red, they were on clearance from Gateway.  We also purchased an instructor laptop that is blue, it’s a bit more powerful.  Even better, it came with a free digital camera!  I’m hoping we’ll have more pictures of programs and events on MRRL’s Flickr account now! 

The laptops are for a Grant we received for a Mobile Technology Teaching Lap.  We’ll be using them to teach patrons basic computer classes like email, Internet safety in addition to classes about blogging and facebook! 

Another great video from the Common Crafts guys.  If you’re looking for videos to use internally with staff, you can now purchase a license and get high quality video from them.  What a great service!

Today is RSS Awareness Day.  Given how many feeds are in my Bloglines account I know I couldn’t get by without it! 

Don’t know what RSS is?  I’ll let the Common Crafts guys explain it to you. They’ll do a better job than me!

I was interviewed by our local NPR station about the Grant we got for our mobile computing lab.  I know I’m a geek, I’m so thrilled to be on NPR.  It’s really short, but you can read the blurb and listen here!

My addiction to Facebook is no secret, I check it regliously regularly and if your’e my friend you probably get poked a lot.  For me it’s a great tool to keep in touch with people.  I pretty much igonre the ads, but today there was one that really caught my eye.  Rideshare! In my area! 

Are any Libraries using these targeted ads?  If they are displaying based on users zip code or network it could be a useful way to draw more people to your page, or in the case of this ad, your website.

I have a couple of invites for Twine.com, if you want one send me an email or leave a comment with the email address you’d like me to send it to.  I haven’t had time to really play with it, so I have no opinion yet.

Haven’t heard of it? From their website

Twine is a new service that helps you organize, share and discover information about your interests, with networks of like-minded people. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.

Yes I know I’m way behind, but in all fairness I was traveling then dealing with jetlag, I had no idea it would be so bad. 

The presentation went great! I’m always surprised at how recharged I get when doing these.   We really had a great crowd both times and some great questions and discussion within the group.  It was so great to meet everyone and I do hope everyone keeps in touch.  Several people talked about implementing LL2.0 at their libraries and I can’t wait to see them. 

I really enjoyed the overall set up of the conference.  I know I said it before but I’ll say it again because I liked the idea so much.  Provide meals!  Lunch and dinner were provided and this was  such a great opportunity to meet new people! So much better than trying to find someone to eat with.  Of course if you wanted to go off with a smaller group you certainly could. 

Jim Griffin gave the closing, while time has made it a bit hazy, I know I was impressed with it.  My notes say:

• relationships that never end
• marketing long term - women do it better (he said it not me!)

Plus a note to myself to revisit David Lee King’s post about 1,000  true fans.

It’s hard to get back into work mode, but I have loads to do, my first class for patrons is next week, it’s Facebook! 

We gave our first presentation this afternoon It was a really great group of people, with great conversation, feedback and questions at the end. I promised them I’d put some links up for them so here they are!

• The presentation
• Library Learning 2.0
• Library Learning 2.1
• Other Learning 2.0 programs
• 43 Things article from Stephen Abrams