Tuesday, January 18, 2011

January's Core Value: Accountability

I have three work-related goals for this year (which I will hold myself accountable for):

  • Collaborate better with my co-workers. My introverted self can sometimes spend too much time in my office with tunnel-vision on my current projects. I need to get out, attend more meetings, propose more meetings.
  • Plunge myself into new projects with abandon. I can hem and haw a lot before starting new projects -- often I need to just get on with it.
  • Do well in the class I'm taking this semester, then try to figure out exactly what masters program I want to apply to.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Thing #5: Facebook

Facebook is huge -- more and more people are on everyday, and people spend an extraordinary amount of time there. So it's good for libraries to have a presence there, though I'm not sure that many people (except Library Science students) are all that interested in libraries' facebook accounts. But we must try!

Belk Library's facebook page is really good. It's got announcements about events, changes in hours, new services. And there are some comments from other users, which is always a good sign. A few things I've seen other libraries do that we could start:

  • University of Michigan has an Event tab on their page -- this way they can post their events to special "event" area. So it shows up on their Wall, but also neatly listed in Events. I also like their use of a logo (M love Library).
  • UNC Davis Library sometimes asks for suggestions for new materials to purchase. Seems like a good way to get a conversation going.
  • I haven't any library that does this, but whenever the library creates videos (or screencast-sort-or-things) they should be posted to facebook.

Thing #4: Prezi

I'm a little behind on my 23 Things blogging... I must catch up!

I discovered Prezi last summer though a blog, iirc. It was right when I was preparing presentations for job interviews, so I thought I'd try using Prezi instead of boring old PowerPoint. And I found that Prezi was actually really easy to learn (their interface is quite intuitive), and it impresses people who haven't seen it before. Because it looks all cool and animated.

In my opinion, the worst Prezis are those that just take a Powerpoint presentation and paste the content into Prezi. Like this Prezi about the history of the Connecticut State Library. Everything is the same size and same orientation. You just go from slide to slide, and it looks little different from a normal PowerPoint presentation.

The good ones make use of Prezi's zooming capabilities to make the presentation more dynamic. You don't want to make your viewers seasick, but you want to let them swoop through your info a little. Just for fun. I like this Prezi, which contains info about a Summer Reading Program at Lynnwood Library.