Jing

Have you used Jing? It's a free screen capturing service.

I was able to make this video in literally less than 5 minutes. It's so cool! It's really quick and easy.. and I can envision it being really helpful when email or chat reference hits a dead end. You know? I usually take a lot of screenshots in those situations and request the student's email address, but we could just paste the Jing video URL into the Meebo chat with this service.

Get Caught Reading

May was "Get Caught Reading" month. I caught the Bismarck faculty and staff reading books which matched their professional or personal interests. Even our RasMall mannequin got into the spirit.

To view staff/faculty pictures, checkout my Flickr photostream.

Library Promo

Last week, I did a promotion "Celebrate Romance!" for June which is Nat'l Wedding & Marriage Month. The first 10 students had their choice of a free romance novel. While low-key, this was a success and something fun & different for the students. They let me take their picture w/the book, but many didn't want them 'posted on the Internet'- so I'll have to figure something else for that. I rec'd a number of free books at one of the FLA programs, donated some of my own that were new (and was willing to part with), and received donated copies from our Gen Ed instructor of one of her books (signed).

ebook tutorial

I found this ebook tutorial to be really helpful. I didn't even know about some of these features.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

The Fort Myers campus has hired an MLT coordinator (Steve Shelfer) and is trying to get enough students to start the program. I was surprised when Steve told me that 70% to 80% of a patient's medical record are lab results, but there's going to be a severe shortage of lab technicians to meet the needs of a growing and aging U.S. population. It "smelled" like a good news story to me, even if I weren't connected to a college that is new in town and offers the MLT associate's degree.

I emailed the story idea and some Labor Dept. stats to some local editors and reporters, some of whom I know. I wrote that although I have a vested interest in the college, "I think it is a great story idea - really a worry if the labs are unable to hire people - esp. in this economy."

The editor of Florida Weekly, with whom I am acquainted, sent a reporter to interview Steve and our MLT program was featured on the cover of the Business section, with a teaser on the front page: http://fortmyers.floridaweekly.com/news/2009/0603/business_plans/032.html

Now we just hope it piques students' interest!

The Golden Day

Originally I was going to name this post the Golden Notebook, but Jon, the Learning Center coordinator who shares space with me, said I should name it the Golden Day because that really reflects how my day has gone. It started off with my first workshop on APA formatting in which I had 10 participants! Students from one instructor’s class brought the rough drafts that had been returned to them. This lent itself very well to the workshop as they could fix mistakes and learn the proper way to format. Aside from those students, I had one who is a midstart, online only, who has been to two of my workshops and another student who hasn’t even started yet. She is excited to start in July and she will already be a step ahead of her fellow students. After my workshop, I found two boxes of books from B&T. One of the tutors was so eager to open the box and see what had arrived. When she and I were talking, Jon came over to see if the book he had recommended for staff picks came in. That book was “The Golden Notebook.” He was so excited that we had it. He ran his hands over the cover and then he looked at the edges of the pages and said it was just like he remembered. I told him I had to blog about it because it was so sweet that he was caressing the book. The only blip in the day was when a sociology student who was working on his paper asked me if I had attended the Woodstock music festival. All in all, a golden day.

poetryslam

poetryslam
Originally uploaded by Rasmussen College - Green Bay

Military Appreciation Month

Last month was National Military Appreciation Month and I'm happy to say our campus had a very successful display - with student, faculty, and staff participation. My student assistants put together the background for the bulletin board and we included information on the branches of service, etc. We received a number of photos, which is great. For June we are doing something similar to continue campus participation/community by asking for comments/memories of parents and/or photos.

Better Signage for All

I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few campus as of late, or see pictures of your libraries, and I’ve noticed that we have quite a bit of signage. Some of it is positive, and some of it has a clearly negative vibe - “Absolutely NO Cell Phones” – as an example.

I’ve changed the post below slightly to encourage a different set of responses. I’m going to post this to the blog, as well – please use that space to post your comments. I encourage ALL of you to post at least one comment. It might be time for us to develop some better signage to provide better customer service to our users.

The group he is referring to is:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=bad%20library%20signs&w=all

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Stephen Abram wonders... Now think about libraries. We have alll followed the Flickr group on bad library signs. There's much to learn. If we had a good discussion about behaviours we wanted to encourage what would our signs look like?
If you accepted the research based communication results above, how would you:
1. Communicate about fines or returning books (on time)?
2. Communicate about not reshelving books?
3. Discourage the use of cell phones?
4. Encourage groups to move to the learning center or student lounge if they are disturbing others?
5. Discourage children being on the computers? (Note: this does not say “discourage children being in the library”. Unless your campus has strict children’s policies AND made students aware of those policies. Children will come in the library. Please don’t fight that battle).

MILE 2009

During the last week in April, I attended MILE. MILE is the Minnesota Library Association Institute for Leadership Excellence.

It was held at the Bug-Bee Hive Resort in Paynesville, MN. Librarians from around the state gathered to:
-learn about leadership styles
-develop our strengths
-ask questions of a leadership forum of current librarians holding leadership roles in the state of Minnesota
-mind map our goals
-get set up with mentors that were in our career path. The mentor and mentee will meet monthly over an 18 month period.

We each took an assessment to find our strengths. We used Strengths Finder 2.0. I found that my top five strengths were Input, Command, Ideation, Activator, and Achiever. The book explains how we can use our strengths to our maximum potential. Much of the institute focused on building our lives around our strengths and simply learning to manage our weaknesses instead of obsessing over them.

Comedy Sportz did several improv activities with the group during the first evening. I learned many new ice breaker games that I have now incorporated in my library instruction. Some examples are having all the students pick their celebrity baby name or robot name. There were several games that required team work and/or expressed status. We did several exercises where we could witness power struggles between two individuals of high status or the empowerment of a high status individual over a low status individual. This occurs in the workplace on a daily basis as well as on the sidewalk or hallway each day when the decision is made who is going to be the person to "back down" in a given space OR be the person to power through. There are certain behaviors that we use each day without even realizing it. This is a nice guide on some of the different behaviors of each status.

Overall, it was a great experience. I met some great people, and I was set up with a mentor. Being accepted into this institute required an application process and letters of recommendation. I encourage the Minnesota librarians to participate in the future.