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there’s been a lot of emphasis lately on communicating with library patrons by using social technologies like blogs, wikis, and rss. i am all for exploring new communication styles with our patrons, especially if they employ technology (geek alert). one thing that has been gnawing at me, though, is wondering how to make sure all the staff at my library are competent in existing (read: old) technologies before moving forward with formal training on the newer tools. without a working knowledge of older technologies the implementation of the 2.0 kinds of tools will be uneven in its success. knowing how to make a photocopy doesn’t have an obvious path to adding a note to a wiki, but i think there is a confidence gained from knowing one simple technology that allows somebody to be willing to explore a more difficult one.
i’ve gone back to some old notes and reminded myself that sarah houghton-jan has some very good insights on how to make sure all library staff are on the same page regarding technologies. she suggests that by having all of our library’s staff members get together to identify what tools and skills we need to do our jobs and then designing a training guide for ourselves, we should end up with a set of core competencies and a staff with improved confidence. when i saw her speak at the internet librarian conference a couple years ago she mentioned that the tools/skills don’t need to be difficult: how to answer the phone and transfer a call; how to buy a copy card and make a photocopy. she has written a technology report for ala on the topic [Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries, Library Technology Reports 43:2 (Mar/Apr 2007)].
to follow up on the blog post about becoming a manuscript reviewer for a journal i asked a couple of colleagues how they got to be reviewers: they volunteered! granted, the people i asked are smartypants and have had their own articles published in popular journals, but they also took the steps to find a journal they liked and sought out the position of reviewer instead of waiting to be asked.
more cat pictures
when you search the image site flickr under the groups tab for ‘creative commons’ you will get a results set with a lot of group pools with a specific focus.
my quick search retrieved
why do you care?
at some point you’ve worked on a powerpoint presentation and have looked to insert some images to jazz it up. flickr may be a good resource for this. the images that are in the “creative commons” pools are put there by photographers that want you to use their images. by looking in the ‘flowers in creative commons’ pool, for example, you will only find pictures of flowers, and only pictures with creative commons licenses.
when you find an image you like, scroll to the bottom right of the page to look at the license. here’s a screen shot of what it looks like:
when you click your mouse on the ‘some rights reserved’ text you will be whisked to the creative commons website, which tells you what the restrictions on the image’s reuse are. in this case the photographer permits you to reuse the image as long as you credit him as the author. easy enough! please note that not all photographers permit you to reuse their images, and those images will have this text for their license:
experiment with this now so the next time you’re preparing a presentation you’ll already know what kinds of images are in the creative commons pools, making your preparation that much easier.
my library has recently been discussing the wealth of social technology possibilities, wondering how to effectively use them to communicate with our users. i’m pleased to be part of an organization that is thinking about this and have been doing some reading to find cases of successful implementation. i came across this quote from a blog post by a museum employee that is thinking about similar things:
Put simply, if you do engage, you[r] organisation will change. If you engage strategically then this change can be managed and paced appropriately.
the blog mentions a book that i will look into to think more about managing and pacing engagement:
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
