Tag presentations

having a telephone

If you’re looking for a link to the presentation I gave today, and even if you’re not, look no further. It is titled: having a telephone

There was a full house at the NSLS and some really beautiful things were said by my co-presenters Michelle Caulk and Terri Sebastian. They both really understand how IM is user-centered. Terri stated, “If you had people lined up out the door waiting to check out books, you’d ask for more Circ staff, likewise you need to alter staffing if IM Reference is popular.” Amen. Regarding any service we offer, if there’s a response, we need to be there. Let’s not be afraid of success!

UPDATE: link corrected

p2p downloading is your friend

Thursday, I get to defend p2p downloading at a (semi) local community college. Also scheduled to talk is a musician, a network admin, and I believe an ethics professor. Should be a great mix!

I can’t decide if I want to call the talk “The Devil Made Me Do It” or “Home Taping is Killing Music” but either way it is here for you to look at.

In the spirit of sharing, the first person to find the reference to a band in my CSS file will get a secret link from which to download a few of my favorite songs of the week!

hardware solutions presentation

For the participants, and anyone else interested:

Smart Computing at Your Library: Saving User and Staff Time (and Keeping Sane) or Geek to Live, Don’t Live to Geek.


planning for tech workshop @ IL 2005

This morning Michael and I gave a workshop on planning for technology in libraries. One very interesting thing to note from the morning is that 100% of the people in the workshop have WiFi in their institutions. How’s that for saturation, right? I found this encouraging. Out of all the technologies we mentioned, here are the few that people found the most interesting.

hot technologies

10 points on IM in libraries

Here’s a barebones distillation of IM in libraries. I’m going to use it as a starting point for my upcoming cybertour at IL 2005.

1. Instant Messaging is free (minus staff time)

2. Millions of our patrons use IM every day.

3. For some, not being available via IM is like not having a telephone number.

4. There are three major IM networks (AIM, Y!M, MSN)

5. Y!M and MSN will be interoperable at some point.

6. Trillian is a multi-network IM client, meebo is a web-based multi-network client. Use them.

7. Having practice sessions in-house is a good way to get staff excited about IM in libraries.

8. Staff can communicate in-house using IM.

9. Libraries can choose to have one IM point of contact, or they can choose to divide it departmentally.

10. IM is user-centered and builds relationships with library users.



greetings from the mount rushmore state

I’m in Pierre /pîr/ to talk with some librarians about using weblogs. The second leg of my trip here was an amazing flight on a small Beech 1900 turboprop. I was in seat 1a, so I had a clear view of the pilots and their cockpit. When we landed it was seriously just like trying to land on the aircraft carrier in Top Gun for NES. Honest Abe, when we landed and someone congratulated the copilot on the landing in windy weather, he replied, “We were lucky!”

I didn’t see any of the conference today, but I did walk around a bit and saw something new to me, but perhaps an old idea. There are a few tables set up for a book swap. There are so many books, in fact, that they were quite messy and unlibrarianlike. This is a good thing though because it means the swap was being used.

Also, I went to dinner with some librarians from South Dakota, and learned that one of them hosts a weekly library related radio show on the local station. What a great way to get into the community! I wonder if the high school station would pass me the mic for an on air book discussion.

Oh, and I also met David King’s mother-in-law!

website kaput

I just got done talking for an entire hour into my telephone. Wow! I was speaking to librarians in Canada about Instant Messaging in libraries for an Education Institute program.

For those people visiting this site for the first time, and anyone else poking around, I must say that I broke the links below the banner last night upgrading my weblog software. If you’re interested in walkingpaper’s RSS feed, it is:

http://www.walkingpaper.org/?rss=1

I’ll have the rest of the site back at some point soon. Cheers!

quick blogging presentations

I was in Arlington, Virginia yesterday to help out with Blog University. The event went quite well: the attendees were engaged throughout the entire (long 8:30-5) day, and the presenters had a great rapport. The whole day seemed very collaborative because everyone just piped in when then had something to add. Because of this, the slides I prepared (using Jessamyn’s awesome layout) contain only a fraction of what these sections covered.

From Easy to Not Quite so Easy: Weblog Technology Options

Weblog Design Considerations: the Right Questions to Ask

north suburban library system IM presentation

Sorry about the delay, but here are the links I promised everyone at yesterday’s presentation at the NSLS.

Fast Cheap & Easy: Instant Messaging in Libraries [ppt]
IM in Libraries, a Bibliography [word doc]

Both times I’ve been at the NSLS, the sessions have had a wonderful conversational feel. Audiences are getting more sophistacated about IM in libraries, so I think it will soon be time to step up and incorporate some advanced issues into the presentation.

Aside from what’s in the powerpoint, we talked quite a bit about IM vs. our local browser-based chat project, IM creating community, and staffing issues – always a favorite.

Literacy Information Round Table Presentation

My presentation for the LIRT program at ALA is up. It is titled Of Horses and Water and is about what public libraries can do to help kids prepare for college.

I didn’t talk about formal Bibliographic Instruction methods, but rather talked about gitting kids in the library and turning them into library users by making personal connections. The idea of connecting to users was echoed by all of the speakers. This made me happy.

One other neat thing in the presentation was James Krusling’s idea of presenting a number of things at one when students are in front of computers. This mimics their information/entertainment gathering habits and doesn’t leave them so bored that they start checking their email and IMming each other. Has basic computer work ceased to be a hot media and needs to be to hold some people’s attention?