Minnesota Library Association (MLA) Conference

The MLA Conference was in St. Cloud, MN from October 14-16th. Excellent conference.

I volunteered for three hours selling t-shirts on wednesday. I sold four, but gave out several pre-paid shirts. I loved the front of the shirt "027.0776;" it means library in Dewey.

Thursday, I attended the entire day except for the opening speaker. The first session I went to was on Online Tutorials. I learned a lot from this session. I learned that video tutorials are the best kind of tutorials to create. People learn more from video tutorials, because there is less interaction/less interruption than in an HTML tutorial. (It's time to put that Instructional Design knowledge to good use.)

Session session was on tools like Twitter and Blogs. Presenter was unable to finish her presentation, because there were way too many questions. The session was way too basic. I knew a lot of what was already said. Learned a few new things: Slideshare.com is a great way to share PowerPoints; there is a RSS Feed Burner that sends people emails when a website has been updated, this is the best way to check how many people are following your updates (I get RSS feeds via email from GRRL; I should have known this); also, found out about a Youtube video that gives a ten minute tour of the Harper College Library.

The third session was the best of the day. I took three pages of notes on customer service. I learned way too much. For starters, there needs to be a "a touch" like a conversation or smile. The "touch" begins at the transaction. Also, standards need to be set not policies. Standards can be followed, policies are read (and sometimes long.) The Red Wing Public Library experimented with bagging books and curb side drop off. I like the idea of bagging books, but am a little iffy on curb side drop off. Although, it would be pretty cool if libraries had drive up windows. I also learned that staff need to own the problem. You can't just direct the patron to a location, you need to make mistakes when your job is too help. I learned much more but way too much to mention.

The fourth session has the best name: "We're Off to See the Widget." It was about using different IMing services that libraries can put on their websites. The main focus was on Libraryh3lp. Other services like Meebo were mentioned. There was a mention of a Library Success Wiki. I need to check this out but sounds pretty cool.

I met lots of people: a prison librarian, a student in the MCTC program in Library Technology, people from MnPals, people from Minitex, and so much more.

More Things on a Stick, Thing 28

Thing 28 was Customized Homepages. I tried using Netvibes, first, because it reminded me of Twitter for some reason. Don't ask me why; it just did. I had trouble using it. For some reason, Netvibes would not upload my Facebook account and my email account, so I decided against using it.

Instead, I tried Schmedley. I tried it, because it reminded me of using a Mac. I like using Macs, so I thought why not? My Facebook page actually uploaded to Schmedley! It took a while for my hotmail account to upload but it eventually did. It was, also, extremely to navigate as well, but it even took my Twitter account forever to upload.

Overall, I didn't really care for hte Customized Homepages, and I think that was because the two that I tried either took really, really long to upload my information or just didn't want to believe some of my accounts existed. I do think that if you could get things to work, it would be nice to have all of your accounts in place. But I had a bad experience with the Customized Homepages.

See you for Thing 29!

Important Links:
http://morethingsonastick.pbworks.com/
http://morethingsonastick.pbworks.com/Thing-28-Customized-Home-Pages

More Things on a Stick, Thing 27

Thing 27... Twitter... Before starting Thing 27, I was not a big fan of Twitter. Never really cared for it. For Thing 27, I thought I would just give it a try. I did like the YouTube Video called How I made 5,000 Twitter Friends in 90 Days. I liked his point about creating two Twitter Accounts: one for personal use and one for professional use. What really motivated me to work with Twitter was that many use it to gain professionalism, so I thought I would try it to gain professionalism.

So, I joined Twitter, changed my background to one that came custom with Twitter, posted my first Tweet, and started following people or places.

I had been working on changing my background with Free Twitter Backgrounds, so now I have a super cool background. I also have Twitter updates sent to my blog so that you can see my updates on both Twitter and my blog.

One thing I don't really care for is how the @replies are set up. I don't like how I can send an @reply to someone and it will show up on my profile and homepage, but it won't show up on the other person's profile. How do you really know if the person you are replying to receives the reply?

I don't really see how Twitter can be used as a way to grow professionally. I do like how it can be used as a marketing tool for both a person or a place. For instance, an author can get his or her name out to others by using Twitter, and a place say Hennepin County Library can post events.

It is a little weird to have "followers" rather than "friends" or something similar to the phrase.

Other than that I don't mind Twitter. It's growing on me and I am visiting it frequently. And I do see how I could use this in work place, again using it as a marketing tool.

See you for Thing 28!

IMPORTANT LINKS:
http://morethingsonastick.pbwiki.com/
http://morethingsonastick.pbwiki.com/Thing-27-Twitter

The Ning

More Things on a Stick, Thing 26

I enjoyed this one. I joined the Ning; I uploaded photos; I joined the CMLE Central Perk Group; and I replied to a discussion question in the group.

I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning in Round 2 a.k.a. this round. I started out using the Ning like I would a regular social networking site. But when I joined the group, CMLE Central Perk, I liked that people were saying: I'm so and so from such and such library. This will help me at work in CMLE. Now when people call or e-mail, I can somewhat put a face to name.

I don't think that I could use this in my personal life. It reminds me a lot of Facebook which I use the most. I think, however, this would be nice for CMLE to have. We could have a group with discussion, and I could see what our media specialists and librarians look like.

See you around for Thing 27!:)

IMPORTANT LINKS:
http://morethingsonastick.pbwiki.com/
http://morethingsonastick.pbwiki.com/Thing-26-Join-the-23-Things-On-a-Stick-Ning

More Things on a Stick, Thing 25

Okay, so bare with me; I've been doing Thing 25 over the past few days so it may take me a while to remember everything I did.

So, I attempted to make my blog talk, but in the end it didn't work out. I tried using Vozme, but that was just to weird for me. Talkr worked out in the beginning, but again it turned out to be weird. I had high hopes for Spoken Text, but it just took too long for everything to load. And I was being a little impatient at the time. Odiogo and Gabcast didn't really enthrall me, so I didn't use them.

I added a commenting tool! I added disqus, because it was either mentioned in an article or one of the videos, so I thought I would give it a try. So far I like it. It also sends the comments right to my e-mail, so I don't have to check my blog every time.

I tried out Sitemeter which is a statistics collector. It's alright. I may get rid of it. It e-mails me on occasion to update me on my stats. Right now, I have none. Sad.:( I'm thing of getting rid of it over the fact that my blog is not a high volume blog, and therefore, I don't need the stats to see what is going on.

I used the photo tool, PIXresizer, to resize some photos. That program seemed way too easy. It was easy, because you uploaded a photo; hit the resize button, the picture resized itself, and it saved to your computer. I didn't like it, because I couldn't give it the size that I wanted the photo at, and it seemed iffy that a photo resizer on the Internet could save the resized photo to the actual folder it was located at on my computer. I checked though; the resized photo saved as the original. I give this photo props for being able to do that.

Originally, in my blog, I had slideshare in as a widget on my sidebar with six photos in it. That program was user friendly, plus it was convenient that blogger already had it as a widget or "gadget." Slideshare was replaced by Picture Trail as soon as I got my hands on that program. That slideshow tool is SWEET! I used the same six photos that I used with slideshare accept I totally go to pimp out the photos plus create a background. See the below blog for the final product. I loved that Picture Trail was interconnected with blogger. That makes things flow so much better. I originally placed Picture Trail in my sidebar, but the pictures were being cut off and that is why it is in the blog below. You can see all of the slideshow.

I did not use any of the polls or quizs, because I felt I had done enough for Thing 25. But I could see myself using them in the blog at a later date. I didn't use SnapShots or Apture either. I maybe could see myself using SnapShots though, because I like the fact that it gives a kind of preview of links and things.

I did, however, add a Search Box with Blog Buster. The videos that were included with Thing 25 talked a lot about a widget called Technorati. I was going to add that widget to the sidebar of my blog but then I noticed that there was something similar to that. I this feature a lot, because it makes finding certain things in a blog easier for the blog users.

I didn't add any of the social networking tools either. I did think that it was cool that you could have a chat box in your sidebar, but I use my AIM and Windows Live Messager about once a year, so it didn't appeal to me that much.

I can, honestly, say that I spent way too much time on Thing 25. And I think that was for two reasons: 1) I was either really into the different tools to add in my blog and 2) some of the things (i.e. Spoken Text) were slightly frustrating.

See you all around for Thing 26! :)

IMPORTANT LINKS:
http://morethingsonastick.pbwiki.com/
http://morethingsonastick.pbwiki.com/Thing-25-Bloggers-Toolkit

Picturetrail: Random Photos