My name is Linda and I’m a project-a-holic… Ok, it’s not that bad, but I just read about the coolest thing that I have to try. So Project number 94 (you know, in addition to my circulation/ reference/ ILL/ webpage/ instruction/ Collection development duties) is tutorials. When I arrived at my current library almost a year ago, I’d come from a large ARL library, which, even though the morale was pretty bad because nothing ever seemed to get done, was actually a shade short of perfection compared to the new library. The website was basic, half the links were broken, or <!–> out, everything was only organised alphabetically…It was a disaster, because they were changing ILS, and it’s so useless that the poor systems librarian had to spend all her time ironing away at all those kinks. Luckily most of the website is now under my crazed power grab control so it looks more well nourished at any rate. And the systems librarian just keeps ironing…
This is just the beginning though and I’ve got lots more ideas to implement. One of which is tutorials. The database page was very sadly denuded when I arrived. Just a list of names- anyone know what BOPS was, off hand, for example?- no explanation, no help, no idea. Each database now has information about it. And so I turn to tutorials. About a third of our library patrons are now abroad ie not in HQ, so el boss was pretty amenable to my suggestion of database tutorials. Consequently I spent a large portion of the winter with my nose buried in video tutorial sites/books/advice columns/ants before I came up with my mini strategic plan. Get me… El boss was pleased, but things seemed to stall as more library drama unfolded. And, I have to say, that I was never 100% behind the idea of video tutorials. I mean, I don’t even have a tv for goodness sake… I guess that I can never be bothered to watch video tutorials as I prefer to skip and jump around inside the tutorial, also it seems to be reinventing the wheel slightly when all those good folks over at ANTS are showing off their tutorials.
Just today though, I read about this RSS tutorial (yes, I’m obsessed, I realise…I promise I don’t have a Google alert set up for “RSS”) Very cool. It’s a tutorial that’s easy to design, make, implement, will be easy for our patrons in our less bandwidth happy countries to view, will let me practice my html/css skills that I’m rapidly forgetting and can be easily used as a reference tool! Marvellous!! It’s “a concept by Librarian.net’s Jessamyn West and was created in HTML using CSS…adapted… for Google Documents and you are welcome to use it as your own template, with credit.”
Feverishly I searched at Jessamyn West’s blog for the template and am now off to play. I may be some time…
(PS Thanks to the unknown Jessamyn and the MLxperience!)
