When a student sits down to get online, the first thing they see is that chat widget, which allows them to ask a question of the librarian. This can help them get started in their research, or can make it easier for them to ask a question when they get stuck.  It may seem odd to a lot of us to put a chat widget on a computer that sits less than 20 yards from a librarian, but a lot of younger users are so used to online communication that using a widget like this is often easier than finding the nerve to talk to An Authority Figure.

Ruth Taylor, the Library/Media Aide at the school, decided to reach beyond her comfort zone to get the chat widget project rolling when she realized that as a librarian she couldn’t afford to lag far behind her students when it came to technology. She wrote to tell me that learning the language of technology was the hardest piece in figuring out how to do what she wanted, but that the process was definitely rewarding! Even better,  it gave her a little knowledge and confidence when it came to other tech projects.  Here’s how she put it:

And another project came along regarding widgets, and I knew what that was!  So, my advice would be to jump in and at least try a few things and try not to get totally frustrated, because when the job is done and successful you can give a great big “Yes!”

Congratulations, Ruth!

Are there any other great “YES!” moment stories out there? How have you reached beyond your comfort zone to provide better service to your users?  Share your stories in the comments below!

A couple of not-entirely-fleshed-out thoughts:

1. While texting is an optional piece, Hasbro obviously expects that most - if not all players - not only have texting capability/ability, but also an unlimited or at least generous texting plan.  I know when I was a kid, we’d play game after game of this for hours. Without unlimited texting, no way my ma would get this for me now!
2. Board games like the old school Clue are of course interactive - to a point. We pretend to be in the world of our characters, wandering that mansion and looking for clues. But in this game, the game comes into and interacts with our actual world.  The game contacts us the same way our moms might - by sending a message to us from… the Hasbro HQ, I suppose.

And as a happy coincidence, I’m re-reading a favorite sci-fi book, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. In the world Stephenson creates in this book, movies of the sort we know now are referred to as “passives” (because we don’t interact with them) and are about as culturally relevant to most of the world’s inhabitants as silent films are to us now.  In the future world, most movies, shows, etc are ” ‘ractives” short for “interactives” where buying a ticket to the movie entitles you to play a part in the story.

It’s a long way from the “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories.

My point I guess is about our changing expectations for information and entertainment and the seeming inevitability of a world in which sitting back and absorbing information is less common than working/playing with it and changing it.  And of course the part that new, increasingly-mobile technologies will play in that.

What sort of examples of this shift from passive consumption to interaction are you seeing in your libraries? What technologies and tools do you see your patrons using to effect this shift?

Interesting sidenote: As I typed this, I got an email alerting me to the fact that Hasbro is sponsoring the 2009 National Gaming Day @Your Library. Coincidence? Hmm…

Thanks to Ray and Colleen at the Utah State Library for bringing this to my attention. It’s a great video that should serve as a wake up call for a lot of us!

Are any of you leveraging the power of social networks or the mobile web in your libraries? If so - or if you have questions about how - please let me know in the comments!

• Edicy.com
• Zimplit.com
• Wix.com
• Amplifeeder.com

Each is has some unique strengths - Edicy is super quick; Zimplit is “dead simple” and offers great code-free skins; Wix allows you to create Flash-based sites; and Amplifeeder, Jolie writes, “creates sites that are the living end in terms of social media aggregation,” allowing  you (or your library) to pull in the content you create across a slew of different social sites like flickr, twitter, etc!

I tend to recommend WordPress for this sort of thing, but all of these look like great - and free - options, too. And of course, for a small fee, each of these sites will allow you to publish to your own domain.

Have any of you used any of these or other online web creation tools? If so, let us know in the comments!

Lucky for us, Alan uses his experience as a cautionary tale to all of us who have to lead webinars, and he gives us a list of 5 things to do if you really want to run a lethal (as in bad) webinar.  They are (with my commentary included):

1. “Make it hard to even get inside:
   Nothing says “Welcome to my webinar!” quite like a majorly convulted and broken process for entering the virtual space.
2. “Don’t let your participants know who else is there”
   Hiding the participant list doesn’t do anyone any good.
3. “Make it hard or impossible for the audience to communicate with each other”
   While having this kind of control  may appeal to the elementary teacher within, we need to recognize our audience is made up of adults, and we need to allow and even encourage the backchannel conversations that are often where a lot of learning takes place.
4. “Don’t greet the audience or make them feel welcome”
   As a presenter in a live space, would you not make eye contact or interact with audience members before your talk began? I didn’t think so!
5. “Ignore your audience, make ‘em wait til you fill the hour with your voice, do not involve them at all.”
   Talking heads are bad enough in person. They’re even worse when it’s a completely disembodied voice.

Read the original article - it’s worth it!

Try it now!

You’ll be taken to aviary.com and a newly snapped screenshot of this page will display. Even bettter? You can edit it before saving it to your desktop. If you sign up for a free account, you can even store your screencaptures online. Now that’s slick!

First download the SnagIt 7 installer and then head over toTechSmith.com to get a serial number for the software. You may want to hurry up as this offer will expire today at 5 PM EST.

It strikes a little too close to home. With all the time I spend searching the tubes for fun new toys, I tend to miss out on some of the bigger picture tidbits. It ’s incredibly hard to keep up on all of it. So, for my own professional edification - and yours! -  here are my attempts to make sense of the references in the cartoon:

• American Idol Finale is tonight (who knew?), with Kris Allen and Adam Lambert squaring off. Apparently, they both feel pretty good about it.
• Google Book Settlement: everyone is confused. Ars Technica does a pretty solid job of summing it up, though. The best I can figure, the settlement that allows The Google to scan and sell out of print books makes libraries (and many others) nervous, and so ARL and others have voiced their concern to the court, highlighting “Two areas that the agreement is largely silent on [which] are traditional concerns of libraries, namely public access to information and user privacy.” Maybe? My esteemed colleague Heather Clark points out that this is a heckuva lot more complicated than what I’ve written here, of course, so click through the links above and read on. Here’s hoping HC pipes in on the comments to make it a little clearer.
• OCLC: A November 2008 policy change caused a bit of a kerfuffle, voiced by one librarian here.  The Thingology Blog at LibraryThing described the November hubbub thusly: “… it looked like OCLC was going to succeed in locking down the world’s library data, converting a wonderful sharing and coordination tool into an unbreakable data monopoly.” Apparently, the ruckus made by librarians has prompted OCLC to hold off on implementation of the new policy until further review. If that’s not enough, OCLC also recently announced they’re planning to add circulation, acquisition, and other modules to Worldcat.org - effectively offering you a web-based ILS. Which might have something to do with the whole afforementioned kerfuffle.  And… er, my esteemed colleague Linda Gonzalez points out that this is a heckuva lot more complicated than what I’ve written here, of course, so click through and read on. And maybe we’ll hear from LG in the comments.
• CommonCraft: If you don’t know it, go check it out! These guys create fabulous 2-3 minute videos explaining sometimes complicated concepts in an entertaining and easy to understand way.  My favorites: RSS in Plain English,  Zombies in Plain English, and Wikis in Plain English.
• 2007: The year that was.
• Twitter: In Plain English. Essentially, a micro-blogging tool that people just can’t love enough.
• Flickr Labs: Unless I missed something huge in 2007 (entirely possible) this is probably a reference to bighugelabs.com’s flickr toys where you can just play, play, play with your photos!
• Animoto: Cool slideshows made easy.
• Wordle: Take any chunk of text, and make a word cloud out of it! Like so… 

And with that, I’m exhausted. Does anyone out there have any updates on the OCLC or Google Books stuff? Now that I’ve learned this much, I might as well keep up with it!

(hat tip to Kieran at the John C. Fremont PL for the cartoon!)

Aside from being platform agnostic (Mac? Windows? Linux? Google doesn’t care!), Google Docs are super-shareable. Here at BCR, the training department uses a Google Spreadsheet to track our team’s coming and goings and what we may need when we’re on the road.  With a team of trainers always on the go and a handful of folks who try to keep on top of what we’re up to, this can be a huge chore.  Having the team share and collaboratively edit one web-based document - instead of having several versions existing in various lo0cations -  saves us a lot of headaches! 

But Sarah Willeford at the MaintainIT blog points out another benefit aside from the hassle-saving: it can also save you money! She writes:

I have found that using Google Docs to collaborate has helped to reduce the number of meetings needed by a group, thus cutting down on travel and time away from your library or office. 

Of course, it’s also free, which is more than we can say about Microsoft Office! Check out Sarah’s post for a little more info on this fantastic tool that you should be using.

Any of you out there using Google Docs in your libraries  as a way to share information with your patrons or with your coworkers? Share how you’re using it by leaving a comment below!

Here’s one I created in about 20 seconds!

Hat tip to my friend and former colleague, Jenn at HCC!