TBLC News
Ask a Librarian signs on two new participants
In March, Ask a Librarian welcomed The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and Florida International University as its newest participants.
The Ringling Museum Library is Ask a Librarian's first ever topic expert, fielding patrons' questions about art history, art projects, or any other art-related topics. The Ringling Museum of Art Library is one of the largest art museum libraries in the Southeast United States, containing almost 70,000 holdings, including books, exhibition catalogues, periodicals and auction catalogues.
During Miami-based Florida International University's first 10 days of participating in Ask a Librarian, its students took advantage of the program so often that the school achieved the highest opening usage of any participating college or university in Ask a Librarian’s five-year history. Congratulations, FIU!
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Charlie Parker elected FLA president
Charlie Parker, executive director of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium, was elected as the 2007-2008 president of the Florida Library Association. FLA members elected Charlie vice president/president elect of FLA in 2005. He served one year as the vice president, and officially became the president during last week's FLA Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla.
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TBLC Blogs
The Tampa Bay Library Consortium has created several blogs for our members, and we’d love for you to check them out. A blog is one of the many ways we keep you regularly informed about what’s going on. We have four main blogs, each one serving a different purpose:
1. Our Training Blog announces general upcoming events and news for the TBLC. In our most recent post, we ask our members to suggest ideas for future workshop topics.
2. Beth's Blog includes updates on TBLC projects, specifically iBorrow.
3. The Ask a Librarian Blog focuses on news, announcements, technical issues and enhancements for -- you guessed it -- Ask a Librarian.
4. Our Library 2.0 Blog offers entries about our Library 2.0 Challenge and general Web 2.0 information.
But most importantly, you can post comments on all of these blogs. Tell us your opinion. Add to our discussion. Let other members know about information that we may not have mentioned. Post links to other informative Web sites. We love when our members get involved!
Take a few minutes to read through our blogs, and if you feel inspired, please leave a comment for us. Keep in mind that we update our blogs regularly, so check back often to see what’s happening at the TBLC, and what your fellow librarians have to say.
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SAVE THE DATE!
2007 Annual Meeting
Friday, Nov. 2, 2007
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Crowne Plaza
10221 Princess Palm Ave.
Tampa, FL 33610
Mark your calendars for this year's Annual Meeting: "Libraries. Changing the World." We are excited to announce that David Lee King will be this year's featured keynote speaker. David is the digital branch and services manager at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas. He is a frequent speaker on Web 2.0/Library 2.0 topics, library Web sites and emerging digital technology. David, we look forward to your presentation!
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Staff Training With YouTube
YouTube and Microsoft don’t realize it, but they’ve recently agreed to help us all with staff training. For free. What a nice bunch of folks! Here’s how it came about.
During our Library 2.0 Think Tank on Podcasting in March, Robin Davis of Sarasota broached the idea of using training videos. Libraries have done that in the past, but there was never a good, cheap, fast, efficient distribution method. How often have you seen training videos really work?
Fast-forward to 2007. Using an inexpensive digital camcorder, the trainers shoot the training footage they want to create. Short and sweet. Then they pipe it through a USB or Firewire cable into any Windows XP PC. They open MovieMaker, which is a free tool in XP (thank you, Mr. Gates). In MovieMaker, they edit the video they just shot. They add a musical bed to give it life. They add captions and credits. Ninety minutes and zero dollars later, they have a powerful training video. Now what?
Their next step is to browse to YouTube and create or sign in to their account. Once they’ve logged in to YouTube, they upload the video from their PC to the YouTube server and record its unique ID number. Anyone with a web browser and that URL can now play that video at any time (thank you, YouTube!).
That means the trainers can “schedule” a brief class and have “everyone” attend simultaneously right at their desks. They can even conduct an e-mail quiz afterwards to make sure everyone really watched it. No more sending a video from branch library to branch library through delivery. No more trying to get the old VCR to work. No more long, drawn-out processes. Shoot the video this morning, and grade the exams this afternoon.
Aside from the camcorder, the total cost is $0.00. And the scenario above is just one example of the innovative, useful things you can do. If you can put it on video, YouTube will store it for you. Even if it isn’t tacky and funky. Luckily, YouTube is broadminded enough to let a little serious stuff in.