LibraryTechtonics

About a week and change ago, I gave a presentation (many thanks to Jessamyn for referring me) at the day-long continuing education workshop “21st Century Libraries: Making Technology Work for Library Users,” which also featured Linda Braun and Casey Bisson.

I retooled my presentation from NH, adding the fabulousness of William Shatner as Your Beta Hero (many thanks to Neil Gorman of Comicology for that), as well as a neato interactive Human Bingo game that helped illustrate social networking through actual play. However, the true thrust of the presentation remained that knowing the culture of sites is knowing the tool: having an account isn’t enough, and playing with the other kids (not just the librarians!) in the different Web 2.0 playgrounds is totally key. I also, once again, pimped the idea of 23 Library 2.0 Things, because my instructor brain loves bite-sized, self-paced stuff, and I think librarians do, too.

I think overall the presentation went really well, and I think it’s my best presentation to date. At some point, I’ll record the audio and make a slidecast out of it, since it really makes more sense with the audio. In the meantime, I’ve had at least one request to do the recording live streamed, so if there’s anyone out there who wants to sponsor that, I’d be game (alternately, I may set up a WebEx trial just to do it, we’ll see).

It’s a bit spooky how well all 4 presentations dovetailed together (Linda spoke twice, the keynote and an afternoon presentation, Casey and I spoke once each), it was almost like we all sat in the same room and figured out how to make them relevant to and flow cohesively into each other. If I had to tag the day, I’d use: social, community, beta, culture, literacy, fun, new, different.

In the course of the other presentations, Linda showed off a whole lot of awesome sites, Casey talked about serving users online and how community is beneficial to the library, I was recorded singing [link added 4:11p] Jingle Bell Rock care of Linda’s computer and The Sims On Stage (see pic left care of Casey Bisson; great for karaoke night or afternoon at the library for teens and up!), and people asked a whole lot of questions. Judging by some of the things I heard at this session, librarians are still looking for some level of control in a community controlled environment, which will make for rough waters in the online Library 2.0 future, but librarians very much want to learn. I’m hoping our presentations offered a place to start in reconciling these bits.

Many thanks to Karen Mellor and her team for setting up such an excellent day!

Tags: Calendar Events, Casey Bisson, librarians, library2.0, presentation, Rhode Island, social media, social networking, Uncategorized, web2.0