Differences

I'm catching up on LISNews, which seems to have changed a little, so my RSS feed wasn't being updated. I stumbled on their version of the library worker who lost her job after refusing to work at a Harry Potter event. I've discussed the case before and can't find any new info online. But the comments are fascinating... The comments on LISNews are clearly against her, while comments from non-library-land are overwhelmingly for her.

Some comments refer to Harry Potter as a religion, which seriously bothers me, but that's another issue.

I need to look this up after work today, but I really don't think freedom of religion goes so far as some of these people claim, that a person could demand every Tuesday off, because their devotion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster called Tuesdays the holy day of the week. Can you imagine how much abuse that would get? Colleges usually have a list of days a student can get out of class for religious reasons, and if it's not on that list, it must be approved. I assume, until I learn otherwise, that reasonable accommodations must be made. Whether or not this woman was offered a reasonable accommodation makes all the difference in the world.

I'm really itching to get outraged at this story, but there's just not enough information available!

Big Games

I'm facinated by this idea of "big games" that will happen at ALA Annual, which I am not attending. I'm trying to find out more about this concept and how we could use it to make library instruction and orientations more interesting for students. Gregory Trefry apparently did a presentation on big games in libraries and how call numbers can be used as codes, librarians as referees, and scanners and computers used as tools. Unfortunately, the slides are posted but don't have any helpful information for people who weren't at the presentation. So far, the most useful site has been Come Out & Play. They organize a big festival in NYC, which happens to be this weekend, and many of the activities are outlined in detail on this site. Now if I can just figure out how they relate to libraries and how to make them educational!

We have been contacted by the college's development office to have a small amount of time during their annual retreat to introduce them to aspects of the library we want them to know about. Two of us in the library just met with the director this morning to discuss possibilities. We are thinking about some time of scavenger hunt, but we only have them for 30 minutes, including about 10 minutes in the archives. I believe our theme will be "libraries aren't what they used to be," or something like that. It will focus on the modern library. We're trying to focus on what we think alumni and donors would be interested in, and that is difficult.

I'm going to further explore this idea of big games and see if we can find creative ideas to make this fun and to make other educational events for students fun... fun for us and for them!

Annual Evaluation

I had my meeting with the library director about my annual reflection yesterday and got her summary today. It went well. I was only a little concerned because I have defined my position in a totally different way than what she had in mind when she hired me, but that was a bit inevitable when I swapped archives responsibilities for the Web site last summer. I've gone farther with technology than is required, but she didn't have any complaints and overall I got a very good review.

Things I need to work on include bringing more active learning activities into the classroom, (though that was very difficult to work on this past year when I was teaching way more than anyone expected me to), and formalizing the faculty office visit program. I don't have to do all of the office visits anymore, the librarians are sharing that responsibility, but I will need to organize a meeting each semester and set a goal of how many office visits we'll do. This seems like a good plan. I also have projects to coordinate with the Writing Center. That won't be hard as I get along with the Writing Center director and we have lots of good ideas for projects.

I will also work closely with two biology professors to improve a class we teach for them in the spring. Each librarian that has taught this class has had a terrible experience with it. Furthermore, it's one of our biggest majors, with almost 60 graduates each year, yet this is the only class we have contact with. So it is a strategic move and I believe will give me a chance to do some creative work with integrating instructional technologies into their coursework.

Of course, we'll also be doing LibQUAL next year. I'm not looking forward to that, I was completely unimpressed with the training I went through at the annual meeting last June. They know they monopolize their market, they don't seem to care about the libraries, and they might as well be on Pluto (formerly known as the ninth planet) when it comes to understanding a small library. But it has to be done and while I'm to shy to enjoy doing assessment, I LOVE results (I'm the same way with taking photos).

Those are my big projects and goals for the upcoming year. I hate evaluations since I'm paranoid that people aren't happy with my work but won't tell me, but I know I do a good job and that came out in my review. I am very happy with it.

Web 2.0 and College Development

This post contains the conent of a handout we plan to give to the College Development office in a few weeks to help them discover the wonderful tools available to help them with fundraising and alumni relations. I wanted to put this on my blog so that I can give links. I'm so used to providing links, it's hard to create a traditional paper handout, but I want to be able to leave them with something physical in their hands. I have linked to my own accounts where I could to provide better examples (not out of narcissism). So, here goes:

First, what is Web 2.0?

• Web 2.0 is also known as Social Media
• Media is no longer just controlled by professional journalists, producers, editors and publishers!
• Includes: blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking, photo sharing, podcasts, video sharing, RSS, wikis, and much more!
• Well-known sites include YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Blogger, del.icio.us, Linkedin, Google Docs, SlideShare, Second Life
• All of these tools are free or very cheap
• Allows for mass participation through comments, ratings, tags, and messages. This leads to engaged users!
• The sky is the limit…

How can these tools be used in college advancement?

• Use them to engage (recent) alumni… engaged alumni are more likely to donate!
• Social networking
• Set up Facebook groups for each graduation class so people can find their friends when they leave
• Set up virtual “events” such as “Give $10 to Lycoming’s annual fund by midnight on September 10, 2008!”
• Set up “causes” – everything that happens on Facebook appears on their friends’ blogs. If someone supports Lyco’s cause, their friends will know!
• Use fundraising “widgets” to show on your Web site and in Facebook how close you are to your goal. See ChipIn for an example of what this looks like.
• Ask alumni to submit brief videos about their post-Lyco life. You can post these individually or mash them together. You can come up with a more specific or creative prompt to give them if desired.
• Start an annual campaign blog so people know how the campaign is going… transparency is a big part of Web 2.0.
• Collect Web addresses for the blogs or homepages of alumni (with their consent, of course) and post them together on the Web for other alumni to find.
• Miami University of Ohio has created their own version of Facebook where alumni can update their contact information and get in touch with old friends. See me if you want a demonstration, though this would not be an inexpensive option. Still you may see things to incorporate within Facebook.
• Vassar and some other schools have created community blogs where all alumni can post news.
• One person suggested to avoid old-school terminology like “Make a gift.” Instead, base wording around supporting the cause. His example was “Vassar fosters some of the world’s best change-makers. Support the next generation. Donate Today.”

Glossary:

• Blogs – short for “Web log,” this is a Web site with frequently updated content. Each news “story” (whether it’s about current events, what you did on Friday, or career information) is called a “post.” The site is arranged with the most recent post first, with older posts following. Example, Vassar's Mads
• Social networking sites –these allow social networks to be visible to others. People create profiles, then can ask other people with profiles to become friends. They can send each other messages, share photos, post blog entries, make career connections, and much more, all on these sites. There are specialized sites such as Shelfari that allow for social networking in a particular nitch (in this case, books). Example: MySpace and Facebook
• Social bookmarking – this is like your favorite Web sites saved in Internet Explorer, but saved on a Web server. You can then “tag” them (label each site link with keywords) and share them with others. Example: del.icio.us
• Photo sharing – people can then organize their photos, add “tags” to organize their photos, create groups with other users, and can see each other’s photos. Example: Flickr
• Podcasts – these are audio clips on any given topic. Example: Grammar Girl, where a woman explains different aspects of English grammar in a way people like me can understand.
• Video sharing – this is pretty self-explanatory. Anyone can create a video and post it for the world to see. Example: YouTube
• RSS – stands for “really simple syndication.” This is a way for a person to be notified when a site with frequently updated content like a newsletter or blog has something new on it. This is set up on the user’s end through their browser or a site such as Bloglines.
• Wikis – this is a way for a group of people to create a Web site collaboratively with no Web development knowledge. Example: Wikipedia
• Tags – many Web 2.0 tools allow the creator to label each post, picture, or Web site link with a keyword that describes its content. This helps the creator keep the content organized, as well as helping the viewers find relevant content.
• Widgets – this is probably the most difficult term to explain. It is a space on a Web site that brings in information from another site. A Google search bar on a Web site is a widget. It could also be a clock, game, or virtual pet. See Widgetbox for examples.

For more information see:

• Joe Solomon. (2008). How Vassar College Can Build Relationships & Fundraise Online with Recent Alumnae Using YouTube, Blogs, Facebook, Widgets, and more! http://www.slideshare.net/JoeSolomon/how-to-build-relationships-fund-raise-online-with-recent-college-alumnae
• Lee Lefever. (2008). Social Media in Plain English. http://www.commoncraft.com/socialmedia
• Ask other development offices!

Book-Focused?

When libraries center "fun events" that focus on books, like painting clay pots based on a favorite book, do we perpetuate a bad stereotype of being all about "old-fashioned" books? It is important to come up with things students will think is fun, yet also somehow be related to the library. Can we have "fun events" that are more about information than books... and really be fun? What does that look like?

That is a lot of question marks in a single paragraph... that says something.

Fun with copyright

I've been working for several days (minus the days I was sick last week) on trying to help a professor get permission to include some famous paintings in a scholarly journal. The paintings are all available in ARTstor, but they don't have the rights to the images, or even know who does have the rights. I have to say the customer service person was very helpful in providing what information they did have, which included which book the images were scanned from and by what participating library. That only helps so much.

So 6 of the 8 paintings she needs are available through a stock photography company. I'm still gathering information about the publication to get a price quote, but as the journal she is intending to submit to will soon be moving to an open-source Web format, I'm not expecting this to be an affordable option.

I'm struggling to understand how artwork doesn't exactly apply to the same copyright rules as text. These are all very old paintings, as in about five hundred years. It seems that copyright should have expired, but I don't think that's how it works. I'm contacting publishers and museums and stock photography companies... I hope I can be of some help to the professor, but this is certainly an adventure!

Random Ideas

I was in downtown Lock Haven, PA last weekened while they were setting up for their Memorial Day celebrations. They had an interesting and moving display - there were banners on all of the streetlights and each banner had a different veteran's photo. The theme was "Hometown Heroes" and people or organizations sponsored each one. They just had a photo, the name, and which war they served in. Their newspaper had a series of stories about individuals shown in those photos.



Since Computers in Libraries, I have been keeping my eyes open for ways we can get students involved in our marketing, esp. things we could put up on our blog. This has me thinking about something like Hometown Heroes, like having students submit photos of vets who are special to them for Veteran's Day with a paragraph about what the person means to them. The problem is we can't say "hometown" since most won't be from Williamsport, and many won't have photos with them at school, and it will be just for Veteran's Day. Anyway, it doesn't really have anything to do with the library.



We're going to interview faculty about books that changed their lives. I'm hoping to record the interviews and post them as podcasts throughout the year. But I also want some good ideas for students. I'd like to think of something they can submit to me that I can post on the blog. Or any other online format, for that matter.



I'm also thinking about instruction ideas for next year. I'd like to introduce excercises on paraphrasing and note taking, and get them to review each others' work. I really need to improve the amount of active learning exercises I do, and these things go beyond just using the databases.