Library Voice

MediaShift: Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution

MediaShift is a weblog that will track how digital media technologies and techniques such as weblogs, RSS, podcasting, citizen journalism, wikis, news aggregators and video repositories are changing our world. It will tell stories of how the shifting media landscape is changing the way we get our news and information, while also providing a place for public participation and feedback.

The blog is hosted by PBS and has been up and running since January 1. The blog contains a reading list on digital revolution topics, as well as a weekly Top 5 of “people, trends, and tech on our radar.” You can get the RSS feed for MediaShift here.

Or so the saying goes, when referring to weather in March. My March is shaping up to be a quite a roarin’ month indeed.

March 6-7, I’ll be giving two presentations at the Ohio Digital Commons for Education conference in Columbus, Ohio. The title of my first talk is “Using Wikis and Blogs to Promote Information Literacy Skills and Library Resources” and my second is “IM a Librarian: Instant Messaging Reference in an Academic Library.”

March 22-34, I’ll be in Washington, D.C. at Computers in Libraries. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to speak on two different occasions there as well. I’ll be talking about my use of a wiki as a research guide in both the Communities and Collaboration track (Wikis in Action, C101 & 102) and in the Learning track (Information Literacy and Instruction, C204). My conference schedule is available on the Computers in Libraries wiki.

Finally, my proposal to HigherEd BlogCon 2006 was accepted. The title of that “presentation” is “Blogs, Wikis, and IM: Communication Tools for Subject Specialists”. While the conference is not taking place until April, my presentation is due this month.

I’m incredibly excited by all these opportunities to share, but I’m even more elated about the perks that come with sharing: meeting new colleagues, making new friends, learning from others, and contributing to the profession. If you’re coming to any of these conferences/presentations, I welcome the opportunity to meet you and talk a little shop. See you there!

Usually the fortunes I get from fortune cookies are pretty cheesy. However, I got this one a few weeks ago, and I’ve been carrying it around in my Palm ever since. With Computers in Libraries 2006 right around the corner, I figured my fortune would be relevant to share:

This fortune came true for a little while this week. Our cable went out at home on Sunday morning around 7, and it was not restored until around 7 Monday evening. I realize that 36 hours is not a huge amount of time to sacrifice, and it was probably even a little healthy for us, but it was terribly inconvenient. Not only did we lose television access, but our internet service was out as well. We were homebound all weekend and Monday, as my son was ill, and not being able to give a 20 month old access to Disney, Barney, Bob The Builder, and the Wiggles is a very bad thing. We called our provider several times to check on the status of the repair, and they kept telling us that there was not an outage reported for our area. They initially told us that it would be Friday (today) before they could have someone out to our house to look at the problem. Fortunately, a repair truck pulled into the yard on Monday evening, and the repairman said the whole section of my neighborhood was out. Apparently the customer service reps weren’t reading the same memos as the repair dispatchers.

Teaching children to share is one of the most important things in parenting, and my son was nice enough to share his cold with me. I’m convinced that the germs mutated inside his body into some awesomely powerful plague before he passed them to me. I’ve been home since Tuesday as a result. While missing 3.5 days of work is never a good thing, it could have been a lot worse with the “lack of computer” or if my cable had not been restored. Because of the ability to stay connected, I’ve been able to at least keep my head above water while I recuperated. When I wasn’t wheezing, coughing, sneezing, or sleeping, I was actually able to get a little work done. I’ve read countless emails, sent or responded to about 20 emails, worked on a conference presentation, did some web maintenance, IMed a couple of colleagues, read some RSS feeds, and even ordered a few books—all without infecting any of my coworkers.

I know that my absence this week has been inconvenient for my colleagues, as they’ve had to pick up my missed reference desk/IM/chat shifts and two classes. I am very lucky to work with some really great people, and it’s a great relief to know that they have been pitching in and dividing up those duties. I think the fear of inconveniencing others when you’re absent can add considerable stress when you’re already sick. Add to that how far behind you get when you miss work, and there’s no question why people go to work sick and Americans don’t take very much vacation time. Fortunately, with the help of my home computer and a broadband connection, I’ve been able make a valiant attempt to keep up. Now I know some will say that you shouldn’t be working from home when you’re sick and that work will still be there when you return. This may be true, but I can tell you if my cable was still out, I would have worried myself sick not being able to keep current with what’s going on at work. Perhaps this means that my head cold is not the only thing that’s wrong with my head??

Michael is conducting a survey of librarians and IM.  It took me all of two minutes to complete, so if you use IM (or not) for personal, professional, or reference purposes, take a couple of minutes to fill out the survey.  He’s “interested to see how many librarians are using IM at their desks to commiunicate with colleagues and as a reference point.”  I’m interested as well, and I look forward to the results of the survey.

This is one way to get students to use your IM/Chat reference service. From the University of Mississippi Libraries:

Chat with a Librarian and Win an iPod Shuffle!
During the month of February every student or faculty/staff member who chats with a librarian will automatically be entered to win an iPod Shuffle. You don’t have to fill out any surveys. It’s that easy!

RSS feeds are popping up all over the place. At our university, there is a feed for hot news, one for top news stories, and even the athletics department has a news feed. All the feeds are linked from the “RSS at Ohio University” page. I’m very proud to say that our Library News feed is on the page, as well as the feed for our library podcasts. This of course adds some extra pressure for me to create some more library podcast content, but fortunately I’ve got a few ideas brewing right now. The university webmaster was also nice to include a link to my RSS class at the bottom of the page, so maybe that will help to draw a bigger crowd.