Looking for a way to test/learn some basic computer knowledge? Check out these free computer quizzes below. Some of the questions might be a little advanced, but you will still learn something and the next time someone asks you about your wireless internet or the RAM in one of your patron computers, you just might be able to answer the question! After you’ve taken/looked through the quizzes, check out more basic computer support resources at WebJunction.
New from MaintainIT – Joy of Computing, Planning for Success!
http://www.maintainitproject.org/cookbooks/planning-for-success
MaintainIT’s latest cookbook is a guide for the over-worked librarian. This comprehensive online resource offers the most current ideas and best practices for planning, building, and managing your library’s computer technology. “Planning for Success” does not aim to turn you into a networking guru. Rather it provides the details you need to get your library’s technology up and running properly, sustain its growth, and ensure its viability. Based on real life experiences and successes of librarians across the country, this cookbook is supported by a complete set of online tools and links to additional Internet resources. One librarian that shared her real life experience is Monique Sendze, Johnson County Library. (A preview of “Planning for Success” chapters is included at the end of this message.)
MaintainIT serves a full menu of live webinars that will help you make the most of the cookbook series while giving you the chance to share your successes and ask your questions. Visit the MaintainIT events calendar, http://www.maintainitproject.org/events for an up-to-date listing.
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“Planning for Success” Chapters:
Questions? Contact Brenda Hough, bhough ‘at’ techsoupglobal ‘dot’ org
In October, I was fortunate enough to go to Monterey, CA for the Internet Librarian 2008 conference. All four of the keynotes were excellent, including Howard Rheingold’s “Communities and Communication in a Social and Mobile World,” Danny Sullivan’s “Search Engine Land: What’s Happening Out There?,” danah boyd’s “Social Media & Networked Technologies: Research & Insights” and Liz Lawley’s closing keynote “Technical/Tangible/Social.”
The sessions I found the most informative included one by our very own David Lee King based on his new book “Designing the Digital Experience.” David talked about the “three paths to experience:” the structural path, the community path and the experience path. The goal of the structural path is to create a better experience by improving ease of use – you focus on the user and what they want out of the Web site, keep it simple, let your passion show in the design and keep the structure invisible. You don’t want to make the user think about how to navigate the site. For the community path, you want to “create a memorable experience through conversations and by creating a community.” To illustrate the “focus on experience” point, David talked about SportClips where it’s not about the hair cut, it’s about the guy-friendly atmosphere. David suggested trying to match the feel and functionality of popular sites like Facebook, Amazon, and eBay.
On Tuesday, I found the “Solving the Money Problem” program with Sarah Houghton-Jan (librarianinblack) and Laura Crossett very reaffirming, as Laura shared her experiences creating a library Web site with WordPress and Sarah gave us “20 Steps to a Better Web Presence.“ Sarah recommended having a technology hierarchy of needs, putting a Meebo widget where customers get angry and including a Flickr badge with interesting pictures of people using the library.
On Wedensday, the keynote by danah was very thought provoking, but equally good was the Pecha Kucha conversational face off, where each presenter gave a 6 min 40 second presentation (with 20 slides). Nancy Dowd shared her Marketing Manifesto, starting with “I will call them by name if I can,” making the point if we don’t know what to call our ‘peeps’ – customer, patron, guest – how can we ever market to them? Other points covered transparency, authenticity, honoring communication tools, being green, supporting innovation, and ended with “I will tell stories – stories that will matter and create an impression.” To illustrate this last point, she shared a simple narrative video about how her library trusted someone enough to give them a guest card and how that was the first time ‘anyone’ had trusted this person. During his mini-presentation, David Lee King urged us to sell ourselves and to let Google be the search tool, but exploit our ability to improve the question asked IN Google.
While I left the conference with many ideas and things to ponder, I really appreciated this point that librarians are experts in posing questions and providing guidance to finding information, be it in an encyclopedia or on the Web. I have included more information about the conference and my impressions at a new professional blog (lybrarian.wordpress.com) I created in response to some points Greg Schwartz made about personal branding, reputation and online identity. – Sharon
