Likely the most repeated phrase to come out of the morning keynote by the Unshelved guys. Turns out that DOL childrens’ consultant Grace Greene was the only one able raise her hand to signify that , yes, she had encountered bacon used as a bookmark.
As much as I would have enjoyed the keynote, I was busy here in the exhibit hall getting my gadgets lined up. We now have our Flickr group for adding attendees pics from the conference and we are encouraging tagging with VLC2008
So far we have a couple of members in the group and I keep encouraging folks to come on by so I can upload their photos. Looking forward to seeing lots of the goings on beyond my little exhibit.
Here we are at the library conference in the exhbit hall, live-blogging more or less, at least as long as the open wifi I jumped on to continues to work. We’re supposed to get hard-wired, but no sign of a technician yet.
We will keep checking in with you as the day goes along. Keep an eye on Flickr for the tag VLC2008. I hope to be uploading pics soon. For now we, go with out question of the day: The future of library gal?
Followers of Vermont’s 23 Things, we’ve arrived at Week 8!
This week, we’ll be learning more about tagging and looking closely at del.icio.us and technorati, two Web 2.0 applications that take serious advantage of tagging (we’ve already looked at a few; Flickr, LibraryThing, and blogs all use tags). Tagging allows you to associate keywords with online content – webpages, pictures, posts, etc. We’ll also be reading and blogging about a few perspectives on Library 2.0.
And as always, it’s still not too late to participate. Spend some time with the first few things, create a blog to record your Vermont’s 23 Things thoughts and adventures, and send me (mara.siegel@mail.dol.state.vt.us) the link to have it added to the still growing list on the Participant Blog page.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of Vermont’s 23 Things, head over to http://vermontlibrarieslearn.wordpress.com and see what it’s all about.
Hey everyone!
If it’s Monday there must be a new Thing. Welcome to Week 5 of Vermont’s 23 Things, (and by the way, it’s still not too late to participate.)
This week’s adventure is about Social Networks. We’ll be learning all about Facebook and MySpace.
If you haven’t already, it’s also not too late to set up your Vermont’s 23 Things blog and send me (mara.siegel@mail.dol.state.vt.us) the link to have it added to the still growing list on the Participant Blog page.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of Vermont’s 23 Things, head over to http://vermontlibrarieslearn.wordpress.com and see what it’s all about.
Please distribute this e-mail amongst your colleagues.
Mara Siegel
Continuing Education Coordinator
WJ Communities of the Month: Vermont and Equal Access
WebJunction Vermont and Equal Access understand the value of training librarians to address community health and use technology to expand their services. Equal Access provides professional development programs for librarians, and library staff share their work in the Showcase. Vermont offers public librarians technology credits to attend Consumer Health Information Resources for Librarians; and they created Vermont’s 23 Things to engage local librarians in emerging technologies.
So I guess multiple homepage tabs for browsers have been around at least as long as the tabs themselves, but I only got around to figuring them out a couple of weeks ago. I had decided that there were at least four web sites that I wanted always to be no more than a a tab away, so every morning, immediately after starting my browser, I would go through the process of opening mutiple tabs for these web sites. But one day when I got to the fourth tab, I said there must be an easier way.
Right now, if you want to skip the rest of my confession about stumbling upon my solution and why I needed it in the first place, you can look at a couple of screencasts that walk you through the process of setting up multiple home page tabs in Internet Explorer and Firefox:
http://www.helpmerick.com/node/1314
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJG9oJfnB3Y
The curious thing about my discovery of the solution is that even though multiple homepage tabs are standard for me now in Internet Explorer and Firefox, I can’t rebember how I figured it out. My best guess is that while contemplating the whole issue of homepages, I took a shot at checking out the Tools, Options…commands in Firefox, and I actually read the buttons under the homepage box and saw that the first one said “Use Current Pages.” The plural of pages was likely the source of my discovery. I was an english major after all.
One would think that I would have learned my lesson and when I tried to do the same for Internet Explorer, and I would just read the dialog box for “Tools, Internet options…” more carefully. But I managed to again miss the obvious and go right past the instruction above the homepage box: “To create home page tabs, type each address on its own line.” Assuming that multiple homepage tabs was another thing that Microsoft was hiding in the software glut of IE, I went off to do some searching. After a few tries I came up with several sets of instructions, including the screencasts linked to above, for setting up multiple homepage tabs in IE, pointing out the obvious option that I kept missing.
So why are these multiple homepages so important to me of late? Well I am tracking a couple of experiments in online interaction and also trying to be more efficient in keep up with RSS feeds. My first tab is just the DOL homepage because it is easiest for me to navigated to our resources from there. The second tab is my Google Reader page with my feeds with seperate folders for professional and personal feeds. The third tab is my login to a Meebo account where I am experimenting with a MeeboMe widget that I put on the “Contact the library“ page in our online catalog. And the fourth homepage tab is another experiment with the “Who is Online” chat function embedded in the VT Libraries toolbar.
While it is looking like the two experiments will not progress beyond being just that (some technical difficulties and some sense that users are not exactly clamoring for the functions), they at least gave me the chance to discover multiple homepage tabs.
Serving the Health Information Needs of Your Patrons: Consumer Health Information Resources for Librarians
There is still room for you at this workshop with a great speaker from Dana Medical Library, UVM. Public librarians may receive two technology credits toward a certificate of public librarianship.
Looking forward to seeing all of you!
Geared mainly toward public librarians, this 2 hour session will cover consumer health information resources available both in print and online. The class will also examine collection development tools for choosing consumer health materials, and the resources, services and programs for librarians offered by the Dana Medical Library, Fletcher Allen Health Care and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region. The session will combine demonstrations and hands-on activities. Our speaker is Laura Haines, reference librarian and assistant library professor at Dana Medical Library. Public librarians may receive two technology credits toward a certificate of public librarianship.
Date: February 6, 2008, snowdate: February 13
Time: 10 a.m. to 12 noon
Location: Midstate Regional Library, Berlin (directions below)
Registration: Vance Asselin, dol_ill_mail@mail.dol.state.vt.us, 802-828-3261
Marj Zunder
Large print and talking book editions of books for book clubs or other recommended readings
Please do think of the possibility of large print and talking book editions of books you are using for book clubs or other recommended readings. We’ll be happy to check a list of titles against our holdings so you can note the availability of large print or talking book on your handouts and allow the visually impaired and other folks with special needs to participate fully in your community reading.
Unfortunately, we do not have “A Restless Spirit: The Story of Robert Frost”, the Vermont Humanities Council’s Choice for its 2008 Vermont Reads program. We do, however, have the talking book for the 2007 book, “Counting on Grace.”
Teresa R. Faust
Special Services Consultant, Vermont Department of Libraries
E-Rate for Fiscal Year 2008
If you are applying for E-Rate for Fiscal Year 2008, the deadline for filing your Form 471 is Thursday February 7th. If you miss this date for filing your Form 471 you will reduce your chances for funding.For additional information go to: http://www.universalservice.org/sl/
If you have any question please give me a call or your regional librarian.
Michael Roche
Large print and Talking Books forthe NEA’s The Big Read
Greetings, all.If your library is involved with the NEA’s The Big Read, or thinking about becoming involved, you should know that most of the titles in the program are available from Special Services in large print, and all are available in talking book (talking book patrons must be registered with us)(one book available in Spanish only). Here’s the complete list of titles and availability.
Available in both large print and talking book versions from Special
Services:
My Antonia
A Farewell to Arms
To Kill a Mockingbird
Fahrenheit 451
The Great Gatsby
The Maltese Falcon
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Call of the Wild
The Grapes of Wrath
The Joy Luck Club
The Age of Innocence
Available in talking book only:
A Lesson Before Dying
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Shawl
Bless Me, Ultima (in Spanish only)
TeresaTeresa R. Faust
Serving the Health Information Needs of Your Patrons: Consumer Health Information Resources for Librarians
Geared mainly toward public librarians, this 2 hour session will cover consumer health information resources available both in print and online. The class will also examine collection development tools for choosing consumer health materials, and the resources, services and programs for librarians offered by the Dana Medical Library, Fletcher Allen Health Care and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region. The session will combine demonstrations and hands-on activities. Our speaker is Laura Haines, reference librarian and assistant library professor at Dana Medical Library. Public librarians may receive two technology credits toward a certificate of public librarianship.
Date: February 6, 2008, snowdate: February 13
Time: 10 a.m. to 12 noon
Location: Midstate Regional Library, Berlin (directions below)
Registration: Vance Asselin, dol_ill_mail@mail.dol.state.vt.us, 802-828-3261
Marj Zunder
Vermont’s 23 Things, A winter learning opportunity
Have you ever been curious about blogs, wikis, flickr, RSS, MySpace, and YouTube, but haven’t had gone beyond looking up their definitions? Here’s a chance to explore those tools (and more!)Vermont’s 23 Things is a self-directed online learning program that will introduce you to many Web 2.0 tools. It will encourage you to play with them and see how they can be useful in your library (or personally).To see more, click on this link to Vermont’s 23 Things or cut and paste this address: vermontlibrarieslearn.wordpress.com into your browser window. Then dive right in!
MaintainIT Project’s latest Cookbook, available now!
Simple and practical technology tips for public librarians needing advice on a variety of computer issues. In the free “Joy of Computing” you will find information on computer security, technology planning, anti-spyware suggestions, computer upgrading, technology training, policies and more.
TechSoup’s MaintainIT Project is pleased to announce the latest Cookbook, packed with tips, techniques, and stories on supporting public computers from libraries across the country, including libraries in Vermont!
Download the FREE Joy of Computing: Recipes for a 5-Star Library here:
http://maintainitproject.org/cookbooks
Find out what your colleagues had to say about wireless, time and print management, and laptop checkout programs. A hearty thanks goes out to the following Vermont contributor, whose experiences made this Cookbook a practical and handy resource worth adding to your collection:
Jerry Carbone, Brooks Memorial Library
*We’d love to hear from more Vermont libraries!* The MaintainIT Project continues to craft guides focused on supporting public computers. Please get in touch and share your challenges and successes so libraries can learn from *your* experiences. Remember, what may be, “that’s nothing!” to you, may be an “aha” to someone else!
Find out the latest at http://maintainitproject.org/blog
Picturing America Grant
The “Picturing America” grant is an initiative that provides a collection of large-scale laminated reproductions depicting works of American art as well as other educational resources on American art and history. To learn more about the grant or to apply go to:
http://publicprograms.ala.org/picturingamerica/
Apply by April 15th!
This grant program is of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), in cooperation with the American Library Association (ALA) and its goal is to enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture by bringing some of America’s greatest works of art into school classrooms and public libraries.
Picturing America will provide K-12 schools and public libraries with 40 images of American art, an illustrated teachers resource book, and a web site containing additional information including lesson plans.
Following up on Amy Howlett’s article in the DOL News No. 139, Winter 2008(in PDF format), I have been making some changes to the toolbar, cleaning up links and adding a few others. If you would rather skip all of my blathering about the toolbar that follows, just go to http://librariesvermont.mylibrarytoolbar.com/Home/ to get a taste of some of the things on the toolbar. At the bottom of this page you will find a link for downloading the toolbar.
The free download of the toolbar is available directly at http://librariesvermont.MyLibraryToolbar.com. Choose the Firefox download or the Internet Explorer (for IE 5.0 and up), depending on your internet browser. If you need a free updated browser before downloading the toolbar, try Mozilla’s Firefox browser from http://www.mozilla.com/. Firefox is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
In addition to the functions that Amy mentioned in her article (direct links to DOL sites like the VALS webmail, the ILL search screen on Web2 & the DOL Continuing Calendar and directed searches of the DOL website, Worldcat and other sites), there are a couple of other functions you may want to check out.
The Feeds button/drop-down pulls in postings from this blog, the DOL Continuing Ed. Calendar, the VLA website. If there other feeds that you think would be useful, please suggest them and we can add them. Something that may fall into the category of a function in search of a need is the “Who is online” button. Clicking on it, brings you to an online chat space where other toolbar users who have also clicked on the button are available for conversation. I would love your feedback on whether this button might actually be useful or if it just another bright and shiny object that has caught my eye. Look for “Sheila” in this chat space if you want to try it out.
Finally, if you have downloaded the toolbar, you may want to verify that it is being updated. You can update on demand by clicking on the VT Libraries drop-down and the far left of the toolbar. The first item in the dropdown is “Refresh Toolbar” and will bring in any changes that may have been made. Also, at the bottom of this same drop-down list you will find “Toolbar Options” where you can select the Enable Automatic Updates check-box on the “Additional Settings” tab.
If you are enrolled in any LE@D – University of North Texas online workshops through WebJunction or are planning to enroll in any in the next couple of weeks, please read the following message and pass it along to your co-workers. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions at 828-3261 or mara.siegel@mail.dol.state.vt.us.
Mara
From the latest LE@D Newsletter:
In order to serve you better, the University of North Texas will be upgrading from WebCT Vista 3.0 to Vista 4.2 over the Christmas holidays. Therefore, all current LE@D courses must be completed by December 17. Registrations received after December 17 will open January 3 in the new learning management system. Courses on the old server will be closed and will no longer be accessible.
Q. What happens if I start a course before December 17, but don’t finish it?
A. Anything you did in the course prior to the upgrade will not transfer. If you completed the pre-test, for example, that score will not transfer to the new upgrade.
Q. If I have finished the course before December 17, will I have access to the course material in January?
A. No.
Q. I want to register for a class, but don’t think I can finish by December 17. Should I wait to register?
A. Even though a LE@D tutorial can be finished in 2 to 3 hours, we promise a minimum of 30 days access to a course. Registrations received after December 3 will not be activated until January. If you can’t complete the course before December 17, please wait to register.
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