Screencast Ideas

Great news - Matt has given me permission to purchase the Camtasia Screencast software. This is a huge deal, as we will be able to produce screen casts at need, rather than having to wait for another department to develop them on our behalf.

I've already created the sample screencast that I blogged about a bit ago on creating a References page in APA style via Word. I am planning to redo that cast with improved audio and text. I am also working on screen casts of our programmatic information literacy presentations, which I hope we can offer to online students in the interim, while we are developing the course.

What other presentations should we develop? In the basic rules of screencasting, I would like each to be no more than 15 minutes in length (we can make a series if they need to be longer) and be comprised of screen shots or screen actions (not video). They need to have a script (because figuring out what to say on the fly is impossible). Ideas, anyone?

NoodleBib for Bibliography Creation

Librarians,

During the call today (10/31), we'll be discussing the creation of campus-specific bibliographies for each program offered at your campus, in preparation for future accreditation team visits. This bibliographies are critical, as they offer team members a glimpse at holdings representative of our entire system. The agenda provided during the call provided you with a list of programs and the due dates for each bibliography.

It is my recommendation that you create these lists in NoodleBib. All of our citations will need to be in APA style, so this eliminates the confusion of whether or not your citations are accurate. Additionally, you can share the list easily, e-mail it easily, and make as many updates as you need to as frequently as needed.

I have created a login for each of you on Noodlebib - Username: firstname.lastname and Password: Rasmussen (this means some of you may have more than one username, if you created a username previously that was something other than firstname.lastname.)

After you login, on the My Lists page, select the Create a New Lists button. You can create as many lists as you want. You should create one list for each program (again, they are listed in the agenda).

From there, you just need to create your citations. Use the citation entire issue of a journal or magazine for the serials in your collection related to each program area.

Be judicious in your selection. While each of your bibliographies should list at least 20 books, do not simply "fill" the bibliography with titles that may be from a related program but have no actual bearing on the program in question (putting transcription texts on the Medical Assisting list, for example). I will be reviewing all lists for relevancy and completion.

This is a GREAT project for work studies.

As a side note, if you do not have a minimum of 20 items in a program area, this gives you a great opportunity to do some collection development. You may also want to collaborate with faculty to assure selection of the best titles for each area (for your list or for collection development). Finally, you may also wish to utilize the faculty annotated bibliographies to assist with this project.

-Emily

My First (Official) Screencast

I've shared this with a few of you already, but here is a link to the YouTube posting of a screencast I worked on over the weekend. Thanks to a few speakers at MLA for their inspiration and exploration of the technology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reFXrhdvnmw

Please bear in mind that neither the sound quality nor the image quality in YouTube are all that fantastic; I will probably revise the sound on this cast later on. It's a good start, though, and I think a potentially great service for our students.

What are your thoughts?

-E

Speaking of Collection Development

From the Personal MBA Blog comes a rather definitive Business Books List.

I think that this would make a great set for any of our libraries. They will all be good for our business students (as well as anyone interested in a little professional improvement).

They also link to the list in Amazon. It may be easier to print it out from there (you just can't order it from there, unless you are using your own credit card, which I don't recommend).

-E

PS.. Anyone else have recommended reading/buying lists?

Article from Paste Magazine

http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article/5496/news/culture/googleyoutube_deploy_new_copyright_filtering_system

Article on what Google/YouTube are doing for copyright by using filters. (Something to think about if we put up instructional videos on YouTube).

Retention.. Retention.. Retention...

Retention is a buzz word on all of our campuses.. and I often wonder what the library truly could do to help. Here are some resources that mention the library's role in Retention:

Predicting Higher Education Graduation Rates from
Institutional Characteristics and Resource Allocation

What’s Our Contribution To Retention

Collaborative Collection Development Team

I met with our OCLC representative last week, who shared some information with me about TitleDirect for Collaborative Collection Development through NetLibrary.

Basically, an Adminstrator (that'd be me) would identify Selectors to receive alert notifications in their program areas and be able to recommend titles through a kind of database.

Reviewers (that'd be you) would receive those notifications, review recommendations, specify quantities and purchase titles.

Specific to NetLibrary, we could just add the recommended titles to our pool. Once they are clicked on twice, we "purchase them". That way, we aren't just buying everything - only the things that will definitely be used. This is the way we bought all of our NetLibrary titles last year.

We could expand this plan, too, to title recommendations from publisher catalogs and RCL Web.

I think that we could sell this "Selector" idea to some of our faculty members. We would provide some kind of incentive (and you'd have to give me some ideas on this) to become a member of this team, and training on using these products. It would be a nice resume addition for any full-timer or for an adjunct interested in becoming full-time.

What are your thoughts?

Hello from Rockford

Hello Everyone,

I am Cynthia Reynolds, the new librarian at the Rockford Campus. Since the Team Call is postponed for a week, I decided to introduce myself here and try my hand at the blog. I come from a background in corrections. After being a Correctional Officer for 20+ years, I went back to graduate school at the University of Illinois to obtain my MLS. I worked for two years at Rockford Public Library in Adult Services/Reference before I started here last Monday.

I really enjoy the positive, friendly, helpful environment at Rasmussen College. This week I am trying to get to many of the classrooms to introduce myself to faculty and students as there has not been a librarian here for several months. My head is still swimming with all I need to learn and I am sure I will need to call upon your expertise in many areas.

I look forward to meeting you all next month at the annual meeting.

Intersting article from a blog on The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 19. 'Where Plagiarism and Bad Editing Intersect'.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/index.php?id=833

Eye contact

I know that Eye Contact is definitely something that I could improve during workshops.. Sometimes I get so preoccupied with advancing the PowerPoint slides.. and pointing at the images on the screen, and I forget to establish eye contact with the students.

This article gives some tricks to improve this skill. click here.

Greetings from Green Bay!

My name is Karen Eckberg, and I'm the campus Librarian at the Green Bay campus. It's the first RC in Wisconsin and as of today, there are approximately 35 students on campus. My job is three-fold. I'm the campus librarian, the Success Strategies instructor for 2 residential classes, and the Success Coordinator until we grow and they hire a full-time one. My first day was October 1st, and it's been a whirl-wind for the past month!

My background is in music, and I am a classically trained cellist and vocalist. I play in the Green Bay Civic Symphony, the non-professional orchestra in town. I went to graduate school at UW-Madison (my hometown) with the intention of becoming a music librarian, but the ones I met were all snobby (no joke!), so I broadened my scope to bibliographic instruction in the academic library. My first position out of graduate school was at Northland College in Ashland, WI, as the Reference and Instruction librarian. It was a fantastic for me, but it is a dying community and finding a position for my husband was not possible. So we moved to his hometown of Green Bay 6 years ago.

Another enjoyable, rewarding job in the library field was difficult to find, but I did work briefly at the library at UWGB, and then, most recently, at NWTC (the tech college) as grants specialist for the past 3 1/2 years.

I'm so very thrilled to have this opportunity and I look forward to meeting you all! Thanks to those of you who have already waved in Wisconsin's direction! And a huge THANKS to those of you who assisted in whatever way in getting this library off the ground, from collection development to cataloging!

The GB campus is slowly getting online, and we're involved in a number of cooperatives with other academic, public, school and special libraries. The highlight next week is introducing Rasmussen College at the Wisconsin Library Association conference which is located here in Green Bay! I've included pictures I've taken of the library. Enjoy!
















You might have heard what Green Bay is famous for. GO PACK GO!

NDLA: Laughing with Librarians

The theme of the NDLA convention I recently attended was Laughing with Librarians. In one session, we shared our funniest library stories.

Some of the stories revolved around misunderstandings. For example, someone told of a patron who wanted more of those "garlic and romance" books. Or the student who wanted a book about a donkey...a donkey named Odie....Donkey Odie. (You may have to read those out loud with a little imagination.)

The creators of the Unshelved comic strip were speakers at a general session. They showed a comic strip in which a patron had used a strip of bacon as a bookmark. They asked the librarians at the convention if anyone had ever had a patron use bacon as a bookmark, and someone had. The Unshelved guys said that in every group of librarians they've asked, at least one librarian has had a book with bacon as a bookmark.

What are some of your funniest library stories? Have you ever had bacon used as a bookmark? What's the oddest bookmark you've seen left in a book?