A ramblin' post about webinars

First off, I want to apologize if this blog isn't entirely coherent (or if it's just a bit goofy in tone). I'm at the end (or maybe the middle?) of a long stretch of paper writing, class, and work at CDL. (Let me tell you, this afternoon was exhausting. The teens are getting stir crazy with the cold, and we had several groups "cruising" the library (for lack of a better word) that had to be asked to "pick a place and settle" several times. They didn't like that.). Oh boy, parenthesis within a parenthesis. That's how my brain feels.

Class last week flew by! It was quite interesting to participate (and run) one-shot workshops-- I learned a lot of new things (like what the heck those boxy not-barcodes are). If I could have had one change, though, I would've liked more talk about library ethics. John and I didn't pick an ethical issue ourselves, so part of it is my fault, but I just felt like there's so much more debate about and working-out of issues that could happen. Gosh, I'd love it if there was a whole class on Ethics involved with librarianship.

I'd also love it if the free html copy of How People Learn were still up. (How's that for a transition?) I'll borrow a book from someone to read on Monday between 500 and 643, but it won't make it to the blog. That's what I get for being cheap.

Now onto webinars and embedded librarianship. I began by reading the webinar form (and the tips that went along with it) and began to get a little nervous about this assignment. I'm not particularly nervous about actually leading the webinar, but I'm a bit concerned about putting it all together. I'm not sure what issues are out there that I know enough about to be the "expert." Hopefully my partners (whoever they may be) will have some idea-- I think once I get that, I'll be more confident jumping into the project.

I went from reading the assignment to reading Montgomery's article on online webinars. I was hoping to get a better idea of what goes into webinars so that I could get some tips/ideas on mine. Sadly, they were not to be found. Much of the article focuses on the idea that college students use the internet and that it's a good way to reach out to them. When webinars specifically came into the article on page 6, I expected to scroll onto page 7 and get more information. But no-ooooo (to be read as John Belushi would say it...I've been watching a lot of old episodes of SNL in the past few months). Instead, there were references. Ah well.

Though Matos et. al's article didn't deal a whole lot with webinars, I still found it more useful. I was especially interested in a sentence that the music librarian (the one embedded within the music school) wrote: "We often end up talking about the music we like, learn, and perform, which is not always related to their assignments." I think this idea is key in making the library an important part in people's lives. As a circ clerk at a public library in a small community, I make a point to learn regulars names and pay attention to the kinds of books they like. I love when Marcos (age 4ish) comes into the library and I can tell him that we have another book on monster trucks for him (he runs around in tight circles like kids do when they get excited). Though I bet Marcos would like coming to the library even if I didn't call out to him, I think the personal contact makes patrons' relationships with the library (and library employees) even closer.

To close out my evening on 643 work, I went on a quest for an interesting webinar. I opted to go to Library Journal's list of webinars, and chose one called "Video in the Library: Trends and Best Practices" that took place on May 4, 2010. I thought I could watch it right away. But that was not the case. First, I had to fill out a complicated registration form that required that I share my address and phone number and said that it would share information with its sponsors. (At this point, I browsed some of the other sites that had webinars, but didn't see anything that caught my interest. So I jumped back to LJ and decided to bite the bullet and give them my info). Then, I had to download a video player, since the two I already had on my computer were not compatible. Then I had to download another browser, since the two I already had on my computer were not compatible (Chrome and Safari...two widely used browsers). THEN, the video on the webinar was not working, meaning I couldn't see presenters slide, so I had to download the slides and flip through them myself. Though I made it through all of these difficulties, I probably would've given up if it weren't an assignment for a class. It makes me wonder, do all participants have such a hard time accessing, or is it just me. I know being a Mac user has caused problems in the past, but lately, most websites and softwares tend to have versions for both platforms.

At this point in time, I was pretty grumpy. I started mumbling to myself about working all day long without a break and the 500 paper I have yet to write and the fact that it's Friday night and I have to stay up late doing homework instead of something fun. (Though I purposely chose to do 643 homework because it tends to be more "fun" than other classes). And then, to top it all off, the webinar wasn't all that great.

Perhaps I should have asked myself what I hoped to learn from a seminar on video in the library. Then I would have realized that though I want my library to have video, I'm not terribly concerned with the various ways a library can license it. (This could change one day, if I'm responsible for gathering media, but by that point, the technology probably will have evolved greatly). But, the real point of watching this webinar was to learn about webinars. So, since this post has been long enough, I'm going to share what I learned in a bulleted list.

- Video of the presenter would make it easier to maintain attention (even if just a bit at the beginning so I could have a face to imagine.)

- Speak with an engaging voice! (The first presenter had an English accent-- good!-- but the second one had such a monotone voice. He sounded bored with the whole thing.)

- Avoid too much text on your slides and don't just read what's written on them.

-Use photos or graphs in slides when relevant.

- Address questions as they come up (as well as you can). By saving them all to the end, you get questions out of context.

- Leave participants with directions of where to turn for more information (They did this one quite well in the webinar I watched).

Since I've been kind of negative in this post, I'm going to close it with a story from work last night. It's not really related to class, so at this point in time, you can stop reading this entry and feel no guilt.

A girl who looked about 10 came up to the circulation desk and asked me if we had the book Fudge-a-Mania by Judy Blume. Immediately, I perked up. First of all because the Youth Librarian was On Call instead of at the desk, which meant that we circ clerks were encouraged to help patrons find books, even though it technically falls under the librarians job-- I like doing that. Secondly, because I love the Fudge series. And thirdly because this girl was so adorable, giving me the book's title and author and telling me that there were hyphens between the words.

"Oh, I love that series," I said, "Have you read the first two?"

"I just finished Double Fudge."

Now, as many of you probably know, Double Fudge is actually the fourth in the series.

"Guess what! There are two others."

So the two of us wandered over to the shelf where the Judy Blume books are, and she picked up the three Fudge books she hadn't read, super excited that the series was twice as long as she thought it was.

And that's a reason why I can't wait to become a librarian.

And guess what song just came on my itune shuffle? Accentuate the Positive, sung by Vera Lynn. I'm going to launch into this attitude change.