Kool Tool

Even if your school or library is blessed with excellent up-to-date technology, Murphy's Law says that sooner or later you will find yourself in front of the classroom without electronic access to the things you were going to share with your students. For me this happened when EBSCO's server was down in New England, cutting off access for me in Kentucky.

At the time I was lucky to quickly find a tutorial on-line that I could use, but in case of future trouble, I decided to make a back-up plan. First, I tried using Microsoft Paint to do some screen captures, but found that I had captured only one screen of my double monitors. I re-did them, only to notice that not only was I capturing all the other junk on my desktop, but that there were gaps on the screen not visible to me.

My tech-savvy hubby recommended WebKut to solve my problems, and it was a great solution. This free application allows you to capture the entire page, current view, or only a selection. I'm in the process of snipping some screen shots of databases, searches, and search results to save on a flash drive, so that the next time something is down, I'll have a plan in hand (literally).

False Dichotomy

I've noticed a tendency among librarians to want to label things like Wikipedia and Google as simply bad and library catalogs and databases as simply good, which is particularly exacerbated when trying to teach inexperienced undergraduates what they need for their papers in 50 minutes or less. I loved this recent post by one of the authors of In the Library with a Lead Pipe, which talks about the importance of not oversimplifying this complicated situation.

There is some great stuff in this post about why it is important not to dismiss Internet sources out of hand, while at the same time teaching students what is and is not appropriate for citing in an academic paper, including some great examples from the author's own experience doing library research as a graduate student. I'm looking forward to reading more.

Library Instruction Symposium

Eastern Kentucky University Libraries hosted a fantastic Library Instruction Symposium in October, with Jeffrey Liles as the guest speaker.

What was really beneficial to me was not so much learning new tips (Dr. Liles kept emphasizing that he didn't bring "a bag of tricks."), but reminding myself of what I already knew about good instruction. Keeping the focus on task-based activities and letting the students work together. It made me think of so many things I used to do as an ESL teacher that I had somehow lost as a one- (or two-) shot instruction session librarian.

And the best part was that I got to meet so many fantastic EKU librarians, who were about to become my new colleagues. The week after the Symposium I began my new job as the Visiting Reference and Instruction Librarian at EKU. It's great to be here.

New Northside Public Library Branch

Academic libraries and public libraries can have a lot in common. The brand-new Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library system is an example of a user-friendly space that reminded me in some ways of our Information Commons here at UK.

From the big, bright sprightly sign out front to the cafe inside to the long outside reading area, the whole space was inviting. Good job, LPL.

Hong Kong Central Library

My husband and I had a fantastic week in Hong Kong for our honeymoon in September. It was a great time, and we both took tons of photos.

When I first spotted the Hong Kong Central Library from a distance, I wondered what that strange-looking building was. However, once we were inside I found it was a very nice space. (Photos were not allowed, so you will have to take my word for it.) The photo of the gold plaque is a braille sign. There were also raised tiles on the floor for sight-impaired guidance.

The central area was very open, which reminded me a little of the Central branch of the Lexington Public Library. I always find myself surprised at how much libraries are really quite similar, no matter where you are in the world.

American Libraries Direct

The Hub @ WT's got some national attention this week, appearing in the American Library Association's e-publication, American Libraries Direct.

A huge Hubbub

On August 25, we had our 2nd annual "Hubbub," a party in the Hub for our new freshmen students to introduce them to the library and the Info Commons. Although I'd thought our first Hubbub was pretty great, this year's seemed like a whole different league of fun. It was almost twice the size of our first Hubbub, with about 700 students and more activities for them to do.

One of our great new activities for this year was a photo booth. Beth Kraemer set up a green screen and Photoshopped students (and faculty/staff) wearing funny hats and holding props onto interesting backgrounds. We showed these on our flat-screen TVs and some of our Video Windows, as well as making a flickr set of them.




Our remaining Video Windows were used for video games. We also had balloon animals, makeovers, a caricature artist, palm reading (had to definitely have this again as it was our surprise last-minute hit from last year), and two tarot card readers. We had pizza and drinks. I think our surprise hit this year was the board games. Students sat on the floor and played Monopoly and other retro board games enthusiastically.

A small touch that I think went over well was putting leis over the heads of attendees as they walked in. Nothing says "party" like wearing a lei. The balloon hats that the balloon artist made also added to the festivities.

photo credit Alice Wasielewski

As for lessons learned for next year:

Ordering more pizza and drinks and having the cups poured ahead of time. Not only did we have many more students eating, but we switched vendors, and the quality of the food was better this year, so students were taking more.

Having a longer Hubbub. We had the prize drawing at 7:15, which seemed too early since all the activities were still going strong, but by the time it was over at 7:45 the library closing announcement was coming over the P.A. Maybe next year we could have a 3-hour Hubbub.

It's only September, but I already feel excited about our Hubbub 2009.

photo credit Kopana Terry