LIBRARY LOUNGE

When I was setting up our social networking contest I spent a lot of time trying to decide what to put in and what to leave out. It was a difficult - there are literally thousands of choices I could have made. One that I put in and then later took out was Second Life. It was not that I didn’t think Second Life (and sites like it), weren’t important, it was just that I thought other sites would be more beneficial. I know that some of you may already belong to Second Life and enjoy it. My request is that if you are active in Second Life please let us know what you participate in and enjoy and if you have time check out the Libraries and let us know what you find. Thanks! Mindy

“WASHINGTON - The American Library Association (ALA) is proud to announce that it now has a space in Second Life, the online community of more than one million users and home to a growing number of library organizations.

According to Jenny Levine, ALA Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, ALA will have one half of ALA/Arts Island, which will be utilized as a new method for disseminating ALA news and information. It will also be used for reaching out to new audiences, holding events, interacting with members and the public, and exploring the future of library services. The half-island was given to ALA by an anonymous donor.” Read the rest of the article here.

Our very own Janine Rose is mentioned in the February issue of American Libraries on page 45 in the Cited column for her award from the 2006 New York Times Librarian.

Mindy

We have a new and incredible tool to offer to our customers: LIVE HOMEWORK HELP and I am really excited about it. This is an opportunity for us to really reach out into the Young Adult/Teen Communities and offer something most of them could really use but may not be able to afford. One of the best things about this service is that it requires very little effort on the part of library staff but gives so much in return.

Each of you will either be attending or have attended a live on-line training session for this new service. If you are unable to attend the on-line training you will be taught by someone else in the branch who has taken the training. If you have additional questions or need more help with Live Homework Help please feel free to contact me. mkittay@marmot.org.

One of the topics of the training is about marketing Live Homework Help. We will be putting posters up in the branches and you may have already seen the business cards we are handing out. There will be some advertisments in the newspaper and an article too.

I will also be visiting all of the public and private schools in Garfield County to talk with teachers about spreading the word. They will receive posters and cards too. If any of you have contacts or information about schools that you think will help me in this endeavor I would really appreciate hearing from you. While I am there I will also be discussing our new (and old) databases that are resources for students.

As always, it is YOU that makes our libraries the success they are and with your help this program will also be a success!

Mindy

Did you know that we have some new databases available from our website?
We now have an excellent Medical Database which includes alternative medicines, Legal Forms, Opposing Viewpoints and a Science Resource Center available through the Thompson Link. We also have Literary Reference Center available through the Ebsco link.

I hope you get a chance to take a look at these and I would be interested in hearing what you think of them. We will start advertising these soon but you can certainly start spreading the word now to your customers.

Thanks,
Mindy

What is a Listserv and why would you like to belong to one?

Here is my very untechnical description of a Listserv. It is a group of people that belong on a mailing list. They discuss topics of interest via e-mail. Each e-mail is automatically sent to all members of the group so that members can follow along and/or add to the discussion or “thread”.

I belong to a few listservs such as the NewLib and PubLib lists. I have gained very valuable information and insight from these lists. Additionally, I have used them to ask questions about issues that we deal with at our library to find out how other libraries have dealt with the same issues. One example was getting help with a list of website designers and some sample “Requests for Proposals” for a website design.

I recently heard about a new Listserv that I thought some of you might be interested in trying. It is designed for children’s librarians’ and is called pubyac:

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.prairienet.org/mailman/listinfo/pubyac or, via email, send a message with subject or body ‘help’ to pubyac-request@lists.prairienet.org

It is supposed to be a very active list so you may get a lot of e-mails. I can help you to set up your e-mail program so that it will automatically put any posts from this listserv into a special in-box where you can them read them at a later time. It is supposed to be very good for children’s programming ideas, children’s and YA book stumpers, etc.

If you would like help setting yourself up with a listserv, suggestions about which listservs may be of interest to you, or how to set-up your e-mail as described above, please let me know and I will help you.

Mindy

RoboForm

I have not had a chance to try this yet but it sounds great. I first heard about it in Wired Magazine. It is free. If anyone has used this service or wants to try it out, I would be very interested in hearing how it worked and what you thought about it. On the website it lists a multitude of key features such as:

Easy to Use - You remember one strong Master Password, RoboForm remembers the rest.
Saves Time - With ONE CLICK RoboForm goes to a website and logs you in automatically.
Saves More Time - RoboForm also fills long registration and checkout forms with one click.
Secures Your Information - Stores passwords on YOUR computer, protects them with AES encryption.
Strengthens Passwords - Generates random passwords that hackers cannot guess.
Fights Phishing - Fills passwords only on matching web sites.
Defeats Keyloggers - Does not require using keyboard to type passwords.

Thanks,
Mindy

Five Weeks to a Social Library

“Five Weeks to a Social Library is the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. It was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software. The course will be taught using a variety of social software tools so that the participants acquire experience using the tools while they are taking part in the class. It will make use of synchronous online communication, with one or two weekly Webcasts and many small group IM chat sessions made available to participants each week. By the end of the course, each student will develop a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library. Five Weeks to a Social Library will take place between February 12 and March 17, 2007 and is limited to 40 participants (these participants have already been chosen). However, course content will be freely viewable by interested parties and all live Webcasts will be archived for later viewing. The course will cover the following topics:

Blogs
RSS
Wikis
Social Networking Software and SecondLife
Flickr
Social Bookmarking Software
Selling Social Software @ Your Library

For a listing of the social software experts who will be presenting during the course, please visit the Program. You can also access content for each week of the course from the menu on the left side of the page. For more about the organizers of the course, please visit the About Us page. The list of individuals participating in the course is available on the Participant Blogs page. To receive all blog content coming from the course, you can subscribe to the following RSS feed http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/blog/feed. To receive only blog posts from the organizers of the course, you can subscribe to this RSS feed http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/taxonomy/term/13/0/feed. We hope you all will take something useful from this course!” (Meredith Farkas - from the Home page of the Course - link above)

For those of us that are enjoying our learning experiences with the Social Networking Contest, the above link will give you access to a lot more information about Library 2.0 and how to put your new skills into use in the Library. There are a lot of really good ideas presented in this course and I hope that we will be able to use some of them in our Library.

Mindy