Tuesday, April 25, 2017

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 2017: PART TWO


Keynote Speaker: Patrick Meier

Patrick Meier started in digital humanitarianism with the 2010 Haiti tsunami. He created an app with volunteers from Tufts and crowdsourced information from the worldwide Haitian diaspora to make the most detailed map of Haiti ever, aiding relief efforts.

For the 2015 Nepal earthquake/tsunami, clouds were making it hard for satellites to see areas that needed help, so We Robotics sent drones in to take pictures. Local communities were taught how to program and repair the robots, learning new skills. Lakes could be mapped to warn of tsunamis in the future.


Live Chat: Librarians Using Simple Technology to Provide Access to Justice (Social and Legal) to Patrons in Distress - Sheri Huppert, Minnesota State Law Library and Elvira Embser-Herbert, Minnesota State Law Library

Here are Ron P.’s notes for this session:

The people from the Minnesota Law Library gave a presentation on their chat services.   Of particular note are the two web sites they talk about--Minnesota State Law Library and LawHelpMN.  These two sites have a lot of information about various aspects of the law in Minnesota--particularly their Legal Guides, which explain in layman's' terms various aspects of individual legal problems and how to navigate the system, and their County Sheets, which list legal resources (free legal advice, etc.) available in individual counties.

Slides for this presentation are available here.

Look Ma, I'm on YouTube! Creating Impactful Library Tutorials - Stewart Van Cleve, Winona State University

I was unable to attend this session, but I’m bookmarking Carla Pfahl of Minitex’s blog post for when I need to create a video tutorial.

Slides for this presentation are available here.

New Tools for E-Publishing in Libraries - Matt Lee, Minitex and Andrea McKennan, MELSA

Minitex & MELSA are planning to offer Minnesota authors a platform for e-publishing using Pressbooks for formatting and Self-E for web hosting. Anyone can apply, there is just a screening for copyright issues.

That’s Pretty Neat: Free and Easy Resources to Boost Your Small Business and Entrepreneurship Programming - Nate Nins, Macalester College

Nate shared his list of top free websites for small businesses:

  • Google Drive - has forms, word processing and spreadsheets. Works on mobile
  • Zipbooks - free accounting app
  • Hubspot Academy -free classes on marketing -registration is required
  • Wix - easy to make a web site, no page limits - includes small adds, doesn’t include web hosting
  • Freenom - free domain names - can sell your name with no warning, will charge if you get too much traffic
  • Cyberplanner - security planning tips from the FCC - both physical & data security
  • Small Business Trends - hot topics in small business world
  • Local tools - find nearby tool lending libraries and rentals.

Links for this session are available here.


--Andrea H. and Ron P.

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