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Internet Librarian 2009 – Meredith Hammons

m.hammons — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:24:57 +0000

Part two of my afternoon exploring social media was Sarah Houghton-Jan, of the San Jose Public Library, discussing Web 2.0 for underfunded libraries.
Sarah discussed several free or inexpensive tools a library can use to be involved with Web 2.0. These included various free e-mail programs such as gmail, or IM services, such as yahoo, Skype for audio and video, Jing for screencasts, etc. She also had 10 suggestions for things to do.1) Talk with customers. Put chat window where people are mad at you (i.e. where they have done a search in your catalog and gotten no results. Use the myinfoquest cooperative (a national consortium of libraries to provide 24/7 reference service). ) Interact with Customers and talk like a person. Allow comments on everything, even if you don’t think it will be a likely place for comments. Create online book clubs, using Library Thing, free blogs for recommendations, etc. 3) Be social. Go to where the patrons are and what they already use. Go beyond the library calendar – few people look at that. Instead, they go to sites like craigslist or going.com. Facebook charges $10 for 500 “flyers” to a targeted audience. 4) Use multimedia. Share images. You can take a picture of marketplace display and upload it onto your Facebook site or on the library website. Use audio and video with free software like Avidemux and free hosting usch as YouTube/BlipTv. 5) People like shiny things. Find out what they want and give them some. Simple things such as the opportunity for comments on books or a link to the large print or sound version from the print version.
6) Use free things such as gimp (a free program similar to photoshop. 7) Marry free and paid content. Don’t assume that the product is inferior because it is free. Respect customers. 9) Offers users choices on how to communicate with you, how to find items, etc.
10) Keep going. If you fail, you are at least pushing the envelope.
While these items cost little or nothing in the way of money, they do have a cost in staff time. Working in technical services and seeing how much things have changed (with a greater amount of outsourcing, etc.), it strikes me that tech services staff are a good avenue for performing these kinds of activities, although in many cases that does require retraining.

Digital Storytelling: Where Outreach, Local History & Technology Collide

Amy Harmon — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:38:10 +0000

Everyone has a story. Being able to turn your story to something that can be shared with others enhances self worth and benefits the community overall. Their story lives on after they are gone. As libraries, we have the training and in some ways, duty to document and archive society’s culture and history. We have the ability to share this knowledge with others that are even outside of our communities through technology. Therefore, I was very excited to attend the PLA sponsored workshop yesterday.

California of the Past is implementing a really great video history program. The pilot libraries: Benicia, Covina, Hayward, Orange County, Sacramento, S. San Francisco. The goal is to capturing slices of people’s lives. What’s really cool is that many libraries or museums have oral histories that have been recorded. These can be paired with historical photographs to create a visual/interactive historical experience. They also have interviews of people that wish to share their stories. The recorded memories of California and local communities enable people to hear others personal experiences and find out what did the community look like, stories that address the recent past or distant past. It promotes intergenerational sharing,

engage aging baby boomers, encourage immigrants to California to share their memories, provide library staff with digital storytelling program skills and encourages library/community partnerships. We watched a number of amazing stories. All of them can be found on their website: digitalstorystation.com

How I See it – California Stories talked about the photography/journaling project that they have implemented for teens. It’s important for teens to know that an important community member enhance status of the library as a cultural place. California’s citizens of all ages and walks of life share their stories to capture a better understanding of what it is like to grow up in CA today.

It is being implemented in libraries and geared for afterschool/summer programming. It’s a packaged program that has a curriculum manual with activities, bibliography, resources, and is supported by the CA state library with equipment, training and a cash grant. Its focus is to utilize photography and writing. There is a method and thought to make this a learning experience using digital technology.

It engages youth to document their community through photographic documentation and writing. It is building a community of writers and photographers that share and communicate their discoveries to peers through exhibits and special events. It is important to keep kids connected to nature and their communities. They explore the area within a mile of the library which not only ties the teens to the community but the area around the library. They focus on the environment and everyday landscape of the community, photo skills, editing and revision of photos and text.

It’s desigined to give youth a feeling of belonging and an outlet for self expression. It (hopefully) improve people’s perception of youth in community and overall strengthens community ties.

I remember discussing something similar to this at my library. I can’t wait to do something like this and get videos up and running to. Something to consider is that it does take time. Overall, the videos from start to completion can take about 10 hours. That is the planning, filming and editing processes. Nonetheless, I’m very excited!

Whirlwind tour of Hennepin County Library

Andrea Mercado — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:22:53 +0000

Meg Canada, who works as Librarian as well as in Assistive Technology & Teen Services Online for the Hennepin County Library (I hope I got your title right!), and is also a lovely friend of mine, graciously took the time on Thursday, March 27 to give me an epic-yet-whirlwind tour of not only the Hennepin County Library system headquarters in Ridgedale, but also a quick run around the Central Library. Both libraries are wonderful, and everyone is doing such impressively progressive things, the whole tour was a treat.

The Ridgedale Library building not only houses the library, system headquarters, and centralized technical services processing of books, but also an office of motor vehicle services, local courts, a coffee shop, and a library book store. From the very entrance of the library, you can tell that the children’s librarian values early literacy, starting with the counting steps (apparently, you hear kids count those steps every time they come in), and carrying through to the rest of the library:

It was really good for me to see how their self-checkout stations are set up, one for adults, one for kids, since we’re planning on launching a similar self-checkout setup at my library in July. As for check-in processes, I got an inside look at their “high I.Q.” Automated Materials Handling (AMH) system (my apologies for the shake on the video!):

After meeting more of the staff and seeing more interesting behind the scenes workings at the Headquarters and the Ridgedale branch, we were off, heading back downtown to the Central Library. I must say, if you’ve heard anything about the wondrousness Hennepin County Library Minneapolis Central, it’s all true.The architecture is beautiful, all that light wood and glass. This was the truly whirlwind part of my tour (I was playing hookey, trying to get back in time to host the Virtual Happy Hour for the Virtual Conference), so I didn’t get to visually document everything that was cool. Like, say, the elevators that, as they go up and down, form words and letters in lights that spell out the titles of recently checked out books. Or how each floor has a uniquely-designed fireplace, complete with art (the giant “burned matches” were my favorite). Or even the beautiful lighting on the different media shelves, and the interactive touch-screen map systems that help people find things. The even have an ATM machine, not far from the coffee shop and book store. Make the trip to Minneapolis to see it in its full splendor, it’s worth it.

I did, however, get a comprehensive-yet-quick tour of Teen Central. Teens from all over the city were involved very early on in the development process, so the entire space is customized to the audience. Teens said they wanted a space of their own that didn’t look like the rest of the library, where they could eat, drink, hang out, listen to music, meet. As a result, Teen Central is a completely enclosed area within the library, complete with a meeting room that has dry-erase board wallpaper, cool flat speakers installed in the ceiling hooked up to a sound system that supports iPods but also plays CDs, excellent comfy seating near the windows, and vending machines (in the only area of the library where food is allowed). And the red-dyed wood for the shelves is *gorgeous*.

Next time I’m in Minneapolis, I’ll spend *way* more time at the library . Thank you so much to Meg and all of the staff at the Hennepin County Libraries for your hospitality!

Behind the scenes at the Virtual Conference

Andrea Mercado — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:03:41 +0000

Here’s an inside look at the PLA Virtual Conference Studio here in the Convention Center, just before things kicked off at 10am.

The PLA Blog » video

Internet Librarian 2009 – Meredith Hammons

Digital Storytelling: Where Outreach, Local History & Technology Collide

Whirlwind tour of Hennepin County Library

Behind the scenes at the Virtual Conference

More ALA conference video on Book TV