Saturday, May 31, 2008

It's Summer!

I can tell it's summer - the Library has been invaded by tourists and foreign exchange students. It's funny to see the different reactions people have to our time system: some people are so grateful to have an hour of free internet access, while others are so indignant to be limited to just one hour! The foreign students are interesting - they don't wait for any explanation of how to use the card I just handed them, so they often run in to problems - computers are already reserved, they don't realize they only get one hour each day. They all seem to use a Russian email program - mail.ru - which likes to hijack our homepage, causing problems to whoever uses the computer next. Or they set the language to something much different than English. But I guess it is good they can easily contact family at home (at least I'd like to think that's what they do with their computer time!). If I had a student studying in a foreign country, I'd be happy to hear from him once in a while.

So, I'll remind everyone how to reset the home page back to the library web site and review the computer use guidelines one more time!

Friday, May 23, 2008

Technology really is great

Even though we sometimes get frustrated and impatient, I was reminded today how wonderful technology really is these days. A frequent library patron today showed me the color photo of her 12-hour-old granddaughter, born in a state in a different time zone, that she had just printed from her email. How cool is that? How thrilled would my parents have been if I could have emailed them a photo of their just-born first grandchild 28 years ago, instead of having to wait 3 weeks and make an 8 hour drive to see him? I can't even imagine.

When my husband was stationed in Korea 20 years ago we would have been overjoyed at the opportunity to email, or IM, once in a while to get up-to-date contact. Instead we were grateful just to have a 30-minute phone call at a previously arranged time (6 a.m. for me, 11 p.m. for him), and if someone was already on the phone he hoped to use, or long-distance circuits were busy, all I got was a busy signal with no way to find out why we couldn't connect. Very frustrating for both of us!

So when I have to wait a minute for a page to load, or lose a cell phone signal, I think back to those dark ages and and amazed by how far technology has come!

Friday, May 16, 2008

I'm still learning

We're really getting started with staff technology training! First, we've developed a survey (online, of course, to get everyone comfortable with online activities) using surveymonkey. I've never been on the developing side, only the participant side, of this so it's been fun for me to try something new. I sent the first version to our technology committee, reviewed their comments, made some changes and sent the revised version back to them. Staff should be able to start on it next week.

We've also started a staff technology wiki outlining the planned course, very similar to the MSL Library 2.0 Challenge (thanks to Lauren and everyone else for letting us use your great plan!). We want to have an instant messaging lesson, too, so I'm working on that one. I've got a meebo account now and am including that in the IM lesson. We'd like to use IM at work instead of a lot of the phone calls we make - a few of us do that already and it's so much nicer than having the phone ringing while working with a patron!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Staff Competencies

We're working on a plan to bring all staff up to a common level, technology-wise. The states' Library 2.0 course was the beginning of this idea, and a presentation at Computers in Libraries last month made us really get thinking about it. We're adapting the North Carolina version of competency levels to fit better with our situation. It's hard to draw a line between "all staff" and "staff who work with the public" here - everyone has some interaction with the public. The hardest part is deciding what to have at each level. There are so many basic skills everyone needs that the list can be overwhelming - that might make some staff give up before even starting! So we're planning some sort of survey: what do they know, what do they need for their jobs, what do they wish they knew. Then we can plan from there.

Then there is the issue of time: when will any needed training take place? But we're just going one step at a time.