Gorilla Librarian

My dream employers! I want them to hire me.






I'm only a cavewoman, not a gorilla. But I think I have some skills that would translate.

Oh Oh -- October Means 2.0

It's that time of year again. October is the month when the Big Chiefs of Library get together for the Library 2.0 Worldwide Virtual Conference .

I always miss this virtual meeting, because I am stuck here at work in my brick and mortar library, dealing with flesh and blood patrons. But I can watch the conference sessions after the fact. The conference people post recordings afterwards, and you can find those here.

There are so many good sessions to choose from! I would like to sit in my cave--er--cubicle, all day and watch these!

These are the conference sessions I want to see:

Embedding library services and information literacy: Successful online library liaison for TAFE (Technical and Further Education) students in Australia.

Setting Priorities in Libraries: Focusing on the Transformation

You are not a robot: Edmonton Public Library’s approach to digital literacy, digital interview, and flexible co-learning for library staff and customer

Toward a Sustainable Embedded Librarian Program

Taking Access to the User Online

Scanned publications in digital libraries: new Open Source DjVu tools

Training Classroom Faculty to teach Information Literacy

23 Things: The Next Generation

Digital Copyright

Leadership and Career Success for the 21st Century Information Professional

Campaigning for a Library Job: Maximizing Professional Development Opportunities to Differentiate Yourself From Other Applicants

Building Online Special Mini Collections for the Bryant & Stratton College Virtual Library

Creating and Using Webinars to Reach Distance Learners

Critical Perspectives on Social Media: A New Educational Role for Librarians?

Social Media for Scholars

Moving Beyond the Traditional One-Shot Library Instruction Session

Online Embedded Academic Librarians: accessing the student's library needs in the online classroom

Getting By With Google?

Free Online Conferencing Tools for Outreach & Instruction

Social Media Trifecta

Information Literacy in a Digital Culture: the Hierarchy has Toppled

Online Book Groups in School and Public Libraries

  

Social Media Narrowcasting

Good Leaders: More Important Than Ever - But How Do We Get Them Ready???

Sensible Shoes on the Ground: Embedding in an Undergraduate Research Experience

Web resources: Getting the most for your money

Effectively Curating a Pinterest Account for Academic Libraries

Citing Sources in a 2.0 World

Delivering 24/7 Library Services from an 8/5 Library Facility

The Triumphs and Tribulations of a Web Scale Discovery Implementation

Guide on the Side : Easy Tutorial Creation for Busy Librarians

Telling Your Advocacy Story with Digital Tools

Best practices in University Embedded Librarian work

Who is the Distance Learning Librarian? Exploring Job Announcements to Understand Evolving Professional Roles

Research on the Go! Preparing Libraries to be Mobile Friendly

Web 2.0 in the Library for Embedded Librarianship

Searching the Web: Information Literacy Tips, Tricks, and Strategies for Educators

 Online Vs Face to Face Information Literacy Instruction

Librarian Crap I Gotta Do Before the Snow Flies

My to-do list for October:

Write report of continuing education classes I attended at MCMLA to present to Grant Award Committee.

I took a class on non-delivery and another on making better presentations. Very helpful information to a cavewoman. Learned that I really am going to have to ditch the club once and for all. It intimidates patrons. And it does not make a very good pointer when I'm showing slides.

Speaking of the MCMLA Conference....

Review notes and wrote blog post about what I learned, so that I can remember what I learned, which I don't remember right now.

Write 300 word essay for application for ACRL Scholarship to take online course on embedded librarianship.

Ah, what's the hurry. I still have two more days until the deadline.

Review six papers that have been submitted for the ACC-RAC conference. 

Snooze.....

Sharpen tools

That is, try out nifty new online tools I read about on someone's blog and see if I can add them to my toolkit.

Create new Tumblr so I can call myself a Tumblrarian.

New Tools for Librarians - Not the Sharp Kind

I totally stole this from the Hack Library School website. There is a Library School named Hack?

It is a big-ass list of tools, and if there is one thing I like, it's a good tool. Before the Freeze, when I was still roaming the younger Earth as a cave humanoid, my people relied on many tools to survive in a harsh landscape riddled with steaming tar pits and blood-fanged beasts. So I know all about the value of a good tool that can save you from having to use your teeth. You don't have to tell me.

So here, copied and pasted directly from the librarian hacks are tools I wanna try:

Online collaboration and presentation tools (slides, videos, etc.)

• SlideRocket:A presentation tool that also includes interactive features like polls for the audience. (Note: free version available for students.)
• Prezi: I think many people have heard of Prezi, the zooming presentation tool that offers a dynamic variation of the slideshow. Some people experience vertigo with the more extreme zooming, though, so use with caution! The site provides more features for users who sign up with a school email account (ending in .edu).
• Storybird: For the visually-oriented, Storybird provides lots of illustrations that you can use to create a presentation or a story. This site is particularly wonderful for storytelling classes and other youth-oriented presentations.
• PBworks (wiki): This site allows you to create wiki workspaces for collaborative building of content on webpages. I used the site with a group last fall to build a site of information about the technology we used to communicate and construct our group presentation over the course of the semester: MLIS Tech Toolkit (includes some other online tools like QR code generators and faux-Facebook wall pages). All of the student groups in my program also use this site as a communication tool to post meeting minutes, draft letters, plan projects, and otherwise share information.
• Piktochart: This site offers templates for creating infographics.
• Mindomo: Mindomo is a concept mapping tool that helps you visualize connections between ideas. It is useful as a planning tool for group projects and can also double as a presentation platform. You can see the concept map my group created while putting together a presentation on technology and libraries: Technology Presentation.
• Google Drive and Google Sites: Google of course has many tools for communication and other things. I’ve used Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) to write papers and make slideshows collaboratively with classmates. Google Sites allows you to build simple websites quickly.
• WordPress: Though primarily a blogging platform, WordPress also has templates that make for good multipage websites.

Live communication and social media

• TodaysMeet: This site allows you to create backchannel chat rooms that you can use in various contexts to allow people to carry on a conversation during an event (like a presentation, a class lecture, a workshop, etc.).
• Poll Everywhere: This site offers real-time polling via text message, tweeting, and online web interface. You can set up a poll that updates in real time on a projected screen to show audience feedback, for example.
• Storify: There a number of these second-order types of social media sites that help repackage social media feeds.

Library-oriented sites

• Library Thing: Library Thing allows you to build collections of books, essentially creating a catalog that also has social media features (ability to connect with other users/collections and to access reviews across the site). We briefly looked at this site in a class to talk about the interface between traditional catalog metadata and social media tagging.
• Omeka: Omeka allows users to create digital collections and provides substantive metadata features for organizing digital objects and making them accessible.

Open Library: This site aims to be a universal library catalog with a page of information for every book ever published.

Thanks again to the Hack Library School for these. Very smart and helpful people. Though if you ask me, they really ought to change their name.