Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Thing Eight, Communication

BigHugeLabs
The idea of creating a mosaic of some of the books our book club had read seemed like a good idea, but I was a bit disappointed in the results. I probably did not spend enough time tweaking, but I do know how I would improve such a project. If our club were intentional, we could photograph ourselves holding the book and create a running photo journal of the books. What would be even more fun is the capability of adding textual comments along with the photos. A photo journal of public library book clubs would be a fun professional use for this BigHugeLabs application; a great way to not only advertise but to create a sense of community amongst the regular atendees.

Zoho Show
Rather than create a slide show of my own I chose to watch the short informational video on the program and decided that this is the way to go if I were to carry out the book club montage I mentioned above. What a fun and easy way to create an interesting Web feature for the library.

This would also be a great tool to use to create "re-caps" of library programs. For example, we had a poetry reading in the library where student read works in languages other than English and then translated them. It was a hit, but what fun if we could have (copyright considered) shared video highlights for the rest of the month on our library's web page. I think students, faculty and staff would have been entertained AND interest in our next program heightened.

If it isn't already obvious, I think the growth and continued improvement in quality of these web tools is a great advantage to the responsibility we have as librarians to market our services. WE know that we offer A TON of great services, resources, and people, but do they? If we can share that FACT with others in an interesting way I think we are making some serious and noteworthy headway.

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