Tuesday, November 13, 2012

CLA Wrap-Up


Money Smart Week @ Your Library

·         April 20-27

·         Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank & ALA

·         Idea is to have library programs based around money and personal finance

·         Possible Program Topics:

o   Money savvy kids

o   Retirement planning

o   Smart investing

o   College financing

o   Savings strategies

o   Credit & debit

o   Financial recordkeeping

o   Cooking on a budget

o   Coupon club

o   Protecting your finances in times of crisis or divorce

o   Identity theft

o   How to start your own small business or foundation

·         Suggestions for promotion were in line with our established practices

·         How libraries participate

o   Sign up at www.moneysmartweek.org

o   Provide at least one class during MSW (April 20-27)

o   Use current relationships with financial education presenters

o   Publicize events

o   Register events into online database

o   Report program attendance and survey evaluation results

·         Archived Money Smart Week Webinar: http://www.ala.org/offices/money-smart-week

o   I had previously watched this, the CLA presentation was much a reprise of that, though with more pictures and good public presenters.  Michael Dowling of the ALA has a very impressive presentation style.

The overall impression is that libraries typically outsource the instruction to community groups, with the stipulation that there can be no “selling” of services.  One of the most popular events is “shred day”, which is the same as what we do on Earth Day when we have the big shredder come.  Apparently shredding things is universally enjoyed.



50 Mobile Apps for iOS/Android and Edmodo for Teachers and Librarians

·         www.Cla50apps.weebly.com

·         Presentation can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/lerichard/50-apps-for-librarians

·         Handouts can be viewed in PDF form http://cla50apps.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/2/3/14234930/handout_cla.pdf

o   Handout has a full list of the apps addressed and has a short little description

·         General use apps such as:

o   250,000+ Recipes BigOven

o   Allrecipies

o   Overdrive

o   Kindle

o   Merriam Webster Dictionary

o   Yellowpages

o   Google Goggles

o   White Pages

o   Govt sites

o   Bible

o   Google Translate

o   SportsTap

·         Accessmylibrary allows access to gale databases

·         Reference USA has a app that allows access if the library has a subscription

The list provided in the link above is certainly worth checking out.  A lot of the apps are for both android and iOS, and most of them are free, so they might be worth trying out for a little bit and then deleting if necessary.  I would use the presentation as a perfect example, of refraining from basing ones presentation on reading the information on the slides or repeating the information provided in a handout. 



Learning Everywhere:  The Transformative Power of Hyperlinked Libraries:  Michael Stephens, Distinguished Author and Professor

·         Mobile applications are now ubiquitous

o   Even kids are using small mobile devices

·         Libraries now stand in the position where information is readily available

·         One goal for libraries is the preserve the communities heritage

M Stephens is certainly worth seeing if only for the presentation style and fluidity, unfortunately the presentation was geared for librarians seeking to make the jump into the first decade of the 21st Century.  This was essentially “Library 2.1”, the question does rise:  How do libraries, why should libraries, can libraries make the move to incorporate mobile devices and apps into their services.  At what point does utility stray into gimmick?



 

The Sky’s the Limit:  Teach Your Customers How to Soar with eBooks

·         San Diego County, Contra Costa County and San Jose public library all circulate ebooks to patrons

·         Numerous libraries found an enormous step up over other systems since migrating their ebook services to 3M’s cloud service.

·         If a library does not provide eBooks that are ADA compliant (i.e. iPad, iPod, Touch), a library can expect to get “nasty letters”



·         One library came up with a program to circulate nooks to elderly patrons

o   Failure

o   All 12 nooks are now sitting in a back office

o   Text too small

o   Hard for patrons to use touch screen

o   Text hard to read

o   Technical requirements difficult for many patrons to overcome

o   Patrons did not understand how to use the devices

It was a librarian from Sacramento who stood up and made the comment that if you don’t provide devices that are ADA compliant that you’ll get “nasty letters”.  This situation is reflected in the links provided above.  The overall vibe was that the idea of circulating ebooks is a mixed bag.  Like all technology it’s great when it works, however in this case there were numerous instances of the program/service not working.  The learning curve to get patrons familiar with certain devices was steep enough that it required a great deal of time and attention from individual librarians to teach patrons how to use the devices.  At one library it naturally evolved so that different librarians would be specialized on different devices and thereby be called on to answer patron questions.



Defying Gravity:  Into the Cloud with Chromebooks

·         Palo Alto City Library & Santa Cruz Public Library offer Google Chromebooks for checkout

o   Palo Alto has a web based presentation regarding their Chromebook lending process


·         Palo Alto has found that the devices are very Palo Alto has had 20 devices either broken or gone missing

o   Approximately $500 each

·         Cracked screens are common and can be replaced without having to replace the device as a whole

·         For true functionality users need to have a Google account in order to download and install apps, or use Google documents. 

·         I asked the rep from Google if there was any plan to make it so that Apps could automatically appear for users under the guest account, she said that it was “on their road map”

·         Currently there is no way to filter the internet from the Chromebook itself, all filtering has to be done from the internet side.

·         I asked the rep if Google planned for a method to filter the internet from the computer itself and was told no.

·         A number of libraries seemed to think that this was the wave of the future

·         The new wave of Chromebooks features a more powerful Intel processor

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