MANGA READING LOUNGE @ANIME DETOUR 2010

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.


Inspired by this entry from the YALSA blog, we decided to try having a reading lounge at our local anime convention, Anime Detour. Katy and I met with Anime Detour representatives to set it up. Since some Hennepin County librarians were already planning to have a presence there, Melissa and I met with them to coordinate efforts. Both systems brought manga and nonfiction related to anime and manga. A drawing to win free manga and DVDs was very popular. Hennepin County brought eye-catching posters with both libraries' names on them (Check out this manga-style character created especially for the library). We handed out flyers for library events and SPPL-branded pens and ID cases/keychains. Did you know Hennepin County Library has an Anime Prom? That sounds like fun.

We were open 12-6 Friday and Saturday. All together, 174 people came to talk to us or check out the manga. We were a little worried at first about not having a separate room, but we had a big area right by the gaming room, which brought a lot of foot traffic. I think people appreciated having somewhere to relax and read as a break from all the convention excitement. Attendees often asked us where different events were (we librarians always look so helpful and knowledgeable), we did a bit of reader's advisory ("Are there any manga series with romance AND action AND character development?"*), while others just wanted to share their love of their favorite manga with us.

Thanks to Amy, Erik, Jody, Juli, Camden, Alicia, Jan and Ally B. from Hennepin County; Lori, Anton and Jo from Anime Detour; Sheree, Therese, Paul, RoseAnn, Jennifer, Bill, Carol, Barb M., Melissa and Katy.



--Andrea


*For manga reader's advisory, Manga: The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson is good, and Novelist has manga as well.

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 5: TOWARDS DIGITAL INCLUSION

The Community Technology Empowerment Project (CTEP) and growing numbers of nonprofit organizations are working alongside libraries to overcome the digital divide by offering computer classes and computer labs. They realize that many people are looking for jobs and finding that the process requires computer skills they don't have and computers and internet access they can't afford. Community technology centers can be found in libraries, nonprofits, workforce centers, schools, neighborhood centers, parks, churches, synagogues and mosques.


As part of a panel discussion, several representatives from these organizations talked about the services they provide:

• Project for Pride in Living offers 30 minute one-on-one sessions, classes about specific jobs, employment help, informational classes such as explaining Facebook. They even send social workers out with laptops their clients can use.


• The Pillsbury Foundation has an employment-oriented computer center.


• Nexus Community Partners, which has an office on the East Side of St. Paul and created the Beehive website to help people find services they need, has started offering computer classes.

The Technology Literacy Collaborative is a new initiative that includes representatives from all these groups, including libraries. Their web page is under construction, but they plan to offer information on best practices and curricula for teaching technology literacy. They are working on a database of all community technology centers on the Twin Cities to replace this one, which is a bit out of date.

Handouts for this panel should be appearing in the FYI basket soon.



--Andrea

Notes from Gadgets: Personal Electronics for your Library (a webinar from WebJunction)

I have just been dragged into the 21st century via a webinar that purported to talk about Gadgets, and ended up being a 603-(yes, that is not a misprint)-way conversation in chat.
While the presenter was talking to us, there was a live chat stream going on the right hand side of the screen and while the presenter was talking quite a few of the participants were holding their own conversations about their own favorites, preferences and experiences with those gadgets. And to top it all off, many of those same participants were also tweeting at the same time. It amazed even the presenter and staff taking part in the webinar.

The presenter, Jason Griffey, is the head of library information technology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and author of the April issue of Library Technology Reports on the topic of "Gadgets and Gizmos". He is also a blogger.

His part of the presentation was basically an overview of the new tablet style of personal electronics. Since that was his focus, much of the 55 minute presentation felt like an extended commercial for the iPad. But some of the points he made are enumerated here.

1) Since the advent of these personal devices, the container and the content have become separate issues. In the good old days, a book was both container and content. Now there might be many separate containers which house the same content in different ways.

2) Media used to be one discrete medium-either text or video or audio. In the near future, a lot of content may be multimedia.

3) What used to be simply read is now heading towards interactivity....when people can change, or even create content with the container, it changes the game of librarianship significantly.

4) With the advent of the new tablets, your display and your interface are the same, there are no external parts, such as a keyboard or mouse. This brings in a new era of portability for everyone. Jason believes that touch electronics are the way all electronics will be in the future. The participants in the chat were not so sure.

5) Over the course of the next 12 months there will be no less than a dozen competitors for the iPad coming out. Of those he talked about, there is only one that may actually be a serious competitor, in his opinion. That device will be from Google and will be running ChromeOS. Google is also hoping to make these devices cheap enough to be "disposable". If they get it right, they might just have a breakthrough device on their hands, which will successfully challenge the iPad.

6) The price for e-readers is going to plummet in the next 12-18 months, because of the demand for tablets instead of readers. (Can you imagine buying a $50 e-reader and loading it with 300 classic titles and circulating that e-reader? How would you do it? How many would you need to keep up with demand?)

For those of you interested, here's the link to the whole shooting match... (chat transcript and all). Have fun!

http://www.webjunction.org/events/webinars/webinar-archives/-/articles/content/95933154


--Doris

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 4: FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL

Any library can host a technology workshop for youth, you don't have to be a technology expert or have a lot of money. Lots of great free software is available. Don't put pressure on your self to understand something "perfectly" before you teach it. The presenters recommend a collaborative approach where teacher and student learn together. Some people need to be constantly reassured, while others prefer to do things themselves.

Hennepin County Library has trained teen volunteers so that they are now able to teach the classes. Other teens feel comfortable coming up to them and asking questions, while younger kids look up to them.

The main program they teach is Scratch which is a fun and easy animation program. We learned to use it in 30 minutes. Here is my project.



Other recommended free software for workshops:

• Sam animation--stop motion animation


• Artrage (not technically free, but can have an endless free trial with some features disabled)--drawing


• Audacity--audio editing


• Picasa--photo albums


• Gimp--photo editing


• Pivot--stick figure animation


• Kodu--video game creation

Optional equipment:

• Drawing tablet


• Digital camera


• Tripod


• Microphone

Handouts for the pressentation are available here.



--Andrea @central

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 3: Wikipedia: The Educator's Friend (!)

Wikipedia can be an excellent springboard for learning lessons about research and the nature of authority.


Benefits of Wikipedia:

• Free


• More articles than Encyclopedia Britannica


• Up to date--good source for breaking news


• Accessible


• Each page contains a history of all changes


• Usually at or near the top of any Google search

Wikipedia is anti-expert. 50 % of doctors have used it in their work. It is the source most cited by bloggers. Andrew Lih (Wikipedia Revolution) calls it "The best place to start and the worst to stop."


Core policies of Wikipedia:

• Neutral point of view


• No original research


• Verifiability (can cite database or print sources, the source might not be available for free online)

Each article has references at the bottom--librarians can look for them in Google Books, databases, or catalogs and find more material by clicking on the subject headings that come up.



Advantages of databases/catalogs:

• Authors are experts


• Well-written


• Rhetorical skills instead of flames

If students contribute to Wikipedia, they can learn critical thinking.


Handouts are available here.


--Andrea @Central

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 2: Best practices for creating online tutorials

If created properly, online tutorials can convey critical information to your library’s users. HTML tutorials are more interactive, but creating video tutorials or screencasts are easier.


Online tutorials are:

• Asynchronous --Can watch them at any time, but it's also easy for users to be distracted.


• Broadcast--Less interactive than face to face.


• Responsive & Scalable-- Many can do it at the same time or when it's convenient.


• A multimedia experience.


• effective for multiple learning styles.

Tutorials are most effective for:

• Chunks of info (they can't be exhaustive).


• Reaching a large or distant group.


• Encouraging multiple ways of learning.


• Tasks, processes or steps, not broad concepts.

Best practices for online tutorials


Design:

• Look at it through a local lens.


• Plan design before you do it. Design should be transparent--be clear about audience, outcomes, content (concept may need to be broken into several videos)


• Visual piece has to be engaging--think visually so users will be engaged mentally.


• Make content interactive--include things like quizzes.

Production:

• Break up content into chunks.


• No more than five minutes, tops --2-3 minutes is better.


• Do storyboarding ahead of time--50% scripting, 50% production.


• Use editing tools to make it more dynamic (this is an advantage Captivate, Camtasia or Screenflow has over free software)


• Everything should be consistent-- same shape of window, file type, text, contact info, and intro screen.


• Record short clips --stop any time you click a link or go to a page--that way you don't have to redo the whole thing if you mess up.

There are many free screencasting options available such as Screentoaster, Screencast-o-matic, Jing, Wink and Camstudio. They don't have editing options, but you could edit the screencasts later in another program like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. For free public domain music check out the Internet Archive or Jamendo.


For hearing impaired patrons, Camtasia & Captivate can have closed captioning.


Handouts for the presentation are available here.

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 1: Readers Advisory 2.0

Social software can be used as a readers advisory tool. You can go where customers are, keep track of what you've read and connect with authors. Try several sites--they are mostly free and easy to drop if they don't work for you.

Hennepin County Library has a Web 2.0-style site called Bookspace. It lets you inform patrons when a book comes out, allows rss feeds & comments and the patron can create a profile. It was created with an in-house Coldfusion script.

Patrons can also create a weekly search in the Aquabrowser catalog.

Facebook can be used to promote the library's catalog and events. Authors have fan pages on Facebook to let readers know about visits & when new books will be coming out.

Libraries can create their own YouTube channel and upload fingerplays & booktalks. YouTube is also a source for author interviews and video tributes by fans to their favorite books.

Ning an easy way to create a group like mystery fans, science fiction, book club, etc.

Librarything is a site for cataloging one's books that is also social. The user can read other's reviews and get "reader's also like" recommendations--even books they would not like! Users create their own tags to identify books. Under the heading of "common knowledge" users add information like character names, movie adaptations and cover artists. Libraries can also publicize reading events there.

Goodreads is another social reading site. It offers book-swapping and quizzes.

Even Twitter can be useful--check out the hashtag #reading.

The Reader's Advisor Online blog is highly recommended by the presenters.

Handouts are available here.

--Andrea, Central

Happy Census Day!

While today is the official Census day, you still have a couple of weeks to fill out the form and send it back.

Here's a White House press release with more Census information and a picture of President Obama filling out his form.

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.