Learning Library Skills Through Gaming

Carnegie Mellon University Library now offers students the opportunity to learn about the library through games in the Library Arcade. The Library Arcade features flash-based games designed to help students develop research skills through entertaining and easy-to-repeat activities.

Graduate students from their Entertainment Technology Center have teamed up with the University Libraries to create educational games to help students develop library research skills. They have two games so far - “I’ll Get It” in which players must help fellow students find library resources, and “Within Range”, a library re-shelving game using the LC classification system. They are still in the testing phase, but have made the games available to the public.

Two learning games are now offered:
(1) I'll Get It! - helps students identify research materials.

(2) Within Range - for students to learn the correct order of items on the shelves.

This information was found in a posting from the library technology blog - iLibrarian.

This Week's 2.0 Book

For more examples of how libraries are using blogs and RSS feeds, take a look at Blogging & RSS, a Librarian's Guide by Michael P. Sauers (Medford, N.J : Information Today, 2006).

Libraries increasingly use blogs and RSS feeds to reach out to users, while librarians blog daily on a range of personal and professional topics. The way has been paved by the tech-savvy and resource-rich, but any library or librarian can successfully create and syndicate a blog today. In this readable book, author, Internet trainer, and blogger Michael P. Sauers, M.L.S., shows how blogging and RSS technology can be easily and effectively used in the context of a library community. Sauers showcases interesting and useful blogs, shares insights from librarian bloggers, and offers step-by-step instructions for creating, publishing, and syndicating a blog using free Web-based services, software, RSS feeds, and aggregators.

Michael P. Sauers is the Internet trainer for BCR's Member Services Division, and a part time reference librarian for the Arapahoe County Library District. He is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Aurora Public Library and the board of the Friends of the Aurora Public Library. He is the author of seven books on technology for librarians and has written dozens of articles for library industry journals. [Amazon.com Review]

2.0 on the Book Shelf

Here's two books that should get you thinking about blogs:

Blogging for Dummies by Susannah Gardiner (Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Pub., c2008. )

* In Part I, readers learn what a blog is, why they might want to create one, and what they need to get started.

* Part II gets readers up and running with their first blog.

* Part III shows readers how to make their blog stand out in a crowd.

* Part IV teaches readers how to customize their blog by adding eye-catching features like expanding a blog's sidebar (where bloggers are able to post personal recommendations, surveys, etc.), adding photos or even delving into podcasting and videoblogging.

* Part V shows readers how to get the word out about their blog and maybe make some money at the same time.

* Part VI discusses how to keep a blog's comments useful and on topic, ten cool tricks tools to make a blog shine, and examples of successful blogs.

How To Do Everything with your Web2.0 Blog by Todd Stauffer (New York : McGraw-Hill, c2008. )

Incorporate the hottest new Web technologies into your blog! How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog makes it easy to choose the blogging tools that are best for you and master the basics of blog design and template manipulation. You'll learn how to add different Web 2.0 services to your blog, including images, video, audio, forums, tags, wikis, and even money-making features. It's time to take your blog to the next level and get more hits, more fans, more friends, and more customers.
*Learn about different blogging tools, including Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, and ExpressionEngine
*Customize your blog's design by editing templates and style sheets
*Share your blog headlines and story feeds via RSS and Atom
*Add photos, video, and audio--including podcasts--to your blog
*Drive traffic to your site with tagging, social bookmarking, and ranking services
*Collaborate with users through wikis
*Promote visitor participation using forums, community blogs, and newsletters
*Make money through your blog with Google AdSense, Amazon, and other affiliate programs
*Track, optimize, maintain, and back up your blog.

More 2.0 Through 1.0

Two recent books about the economy and business can help illustrate the nature of the "2.0" phenomena. The world - they would say - is not so much made up of black and white as it is many shades of gray. There's a mulitiplicity of choices, ideas and niche interests that draw people into the marketplace. As information and entertainment providers, libraries are certainly part of that equation.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Wired editor Chris Anderson.

"Anderson declares the death of "common culture"—and insists that it's for the best. Why don't we all watch the same TV shows, like we used to? Because not long ago, "we had fewer alternatives to compete for our screen attention," he writes. Smash hits have existed largely because of scarcity: with a finite number of bookstore shelves and theaters and Wal-Mart CD racks, "it's only sensible to fill them with the titles that will sell best." Today, Web sites and online retailers offer seemingly infinite inventory, and the result is the "shattering of the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards." These "countless niches" are market opportunities for those who cast a wide net and de-emphasize the search for blockbusters. It's a provocative analysis and almost certainly on target—though Anderson's assurances that these principles are equally applicable outside the media and entertainment industries are not entirely convincing." [Publisher's Weekly]

Check out the Long Tail blog.


The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger.

"Experienced technology users with a history of communicating over the Web, Levine (Sun Guide to Webstyle), Locke (who has worked for MCI and IBM and written for such publications as Forbes), Searls (a senior editor at Linux Journal) and Weinberger (a regular commentator on NPR) want nothing less than to change the way the world does business. Commerce, they argue, should not be about transactions, it should be about conversations, no matter what the medium. The artifice that frequently accompanies buying and selling should be replaced by a genuine attempt to satisfy the needs, wants and desires of the people on both sides of the equation." [Publisher's Weekly]

Check out the Cluetrain blog.

Have you visited Tutor.com?

During these two weeks of exploring virtual reference it seems only fair to spend a little time discussing Tutor.com, one of our online homework help resources. It offers live, one-on-one tutoring for grades 4-12 in Math, Science, Social Studies & English and college intro.

Tutor.com is a resource that we have strongly promoted in our elibraries as a resource for their after-school crowd stuggling with homework. The service begins at 2:00 pm (when schools start letting out) and is available until 12:00 am. There are no time limits on each session which allows the students to take their time as they learn. After logging in, the tutors and students communicate easily via a chat and whiteboard. This may seem confusing but this service is acutally a very easy tool to use.

A visit to their website may be a good place to start and view the short video which explains the homework help service. Perhaps later you may choose to log in to Tutor.com from our HCPLC website under Databases and Websites > Online Learning. Tell the tutor you work for the library and that you are just trying to learn the product. They won't mind. It would also be a good idea to go prepared with a question, perhaps a math problem, and see how it works. You also have the option of visiting the Help section offline and learning all about the features.

This is a great tool. Take some time to familiarize yourself with its features and offer it to your customers as an after hours resource tool.

Rip Van Winkle visits the library

The Time magazine article How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century recounts a joke exchanged by educators:

Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls--every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."

The article does not suggest that schools in the United States are completely frozen in time, but that they are not keeping pace with the changes in technology in other areas of life. Children are global citizens now, even those in rural America, and they must develop the 21st century skills demanded by today's economy. Web 2.0 skills are no longer an option but a necessity.

Let's continue with Van Winkle's tour of our country. Other than the elimination of the card catalog, would he believe many of our libraries have been frozen in time?

Getting to 2.0 Through 1.0*

Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become, by Peter Moreville.

How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity. Written by Peter Morville, author of the groundbreaking Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the book defines our current age as a state of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability.

Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since Web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile Internet.

The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future. Morville's book is highlighted with full color illustrations and rich examples that bring his prose to life.

Ambient Findability doesn't preach or pretend to know all the answers. Instead, it presents research, stories, and examples in support of its novel ideas. Are we truly at a critical point in our evolution where the quality of our digital networks will dictate how we behave as a species? Is findability indeed the primary key to a successful global marketplace in the 21st century and beyond. Peter Morville takes you on a thought-provoking tour of these memes and more -- ideas that will not only fascinate but will stir your creativity in practical ways that you can apply to your work immediately. (from Amazon.com)

This was one of the two books that we used when we decided to overhaul the Library's Information Gateway for its morph into the Databases & Websites page.

Check out Peter Moreville's findability.org blog.

*The idea for this weekly post came from LibraryBytes: Understanding 2.0 using 1.0.

The Results Are In!

Aren't you just ichin' to find out what everybody else said on the "How 2.0 RU?" survey? Just visit my eSnips site and download the survey results. Select the "SurveyResults.pdf" link to open or download the results.

Are there any surprises in there? Based on these results, we should have a pretty lively Podcasting discussion.

eSnips is a free, web 2.0 interest-driven social sharing site that allows users to share content and promote their creations and form social niche communities around their specific areas of interest. Members can upload and share content in any file type from one centralized profile, in folders representing their different areas of interest, and can determine the audience for each folder. eSnips is a Flickr type service for data files.

Getting Started...

It's great to see so many people getting started with the training. Here's a few helpful hints to make this self-paced training a success for you:

• Read through the "About hcplc=Lib 2.0" located at the top of the workbook links.
• Visit the workbook lesson, read through some of the introductory articles, watch the videos under the Learning Objectives heading.
• Follow the directions under the Skill Practice and Experience Sharing headings.
• Talk through what you have learned with co-workers.
• Share your thoughts, comments, ideas and questions using the comments feature at the bottom of each post.
• Practice, practice, practice.

We will also be featuring library materials relating to "twopointopia" as well. Let's start with:

Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service by Michael E. Casey & Laura C. Savastinuk. Information Today, Inc. 2007

"In Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service, two of the first and most original thinkers on Library 2.0 introduce the essential concepts and offer ways to improve service to better meet the changing needs of 21st century library users. Describing a service model of constant and purposeful change, evaluation and updating of library services, and user participation, the book both outlines the theoretical underpinnings of Library 2.0 and provides practical advice on how to get there. From incorporating technology to reaching The Long Tail, from getting buy-in to maintaining momentum, all aspects of Library 2.0 are covered."

“Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk have taken the discussion of Library 2.0 from just a conversation among technophiles to the key audience: library administrators. They have debunked the myth that Library 2.0 is only about new technologies and framed it as a customer service issue. This book includes real life examples of how Library 2.0 can be applied in libraries.”
— Michael Golrick, Library Director, L. E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, Eau Claire, WI, and author, Thoughts from a Library Administrator

A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto

Manifesto...that sounds pretty hard core!

• I will recognize that the universe of information culture is changing fast and that libraries need to respond positively to these changes to provide resources and services that users need and want.
• I will educate myself about the information culture of my users and look for ways to incorporate what I learn into library services.

Want to read more...go to A Librarian's 2.0 Manifest by Laura Cohen.

The C's of Our Sea of Change

February, 2007 Computers in Libraries article about PLCMC's recent 9 week Library 2.0 training program...

The C’s of Our Sea Change: Plans for Training Staff, from Core Competencies to LEARNING 2.0 by Helene Blowers and Lori Reed.

Yes, they use the term - "Core Competencies"...take a look.

Nine Best Practices on Learning 2.0

From Helen Blowers:

In the past few weeks I've had several libraries contact me asking for guidance in creating their own Learning 2.0 programs and while I can't say that I have all the answers, what I can offer is a list of my Best Practices or Lessons Learned from my experience. So here they are in no particular order.

Learning 2.0 Thoughts & Best Practices:

1. Don't confuse learning with training
2. Design the program for late bloomers
3. Allow participants to blog anonymously
4. Use 1.0 methods to continually communicate
5. Focus on “discovery” & offer challenges
6. Encourage staff to work together
7. It’s not about “doing IT right”
8. Practice transparency & enable radical trust
9. Continually encourage staff to “Play”

Read more ...