Last Friday I presented a 90 minute talk on Weblogs, RSS and Wikis for a group of 35 Purdue University librarians. It was a wonderful experience!
My goals for the session:
Demonstrate how powerful blog software can be to meet the needs of delivering content externally and internally in libraries
Provide explanation of how blogging works, what RSS is about and how to use Bloglines to gather content.
Define some of the top tech trends swirling around this whole idea of blogs/rss/wikis… and OSS, folksonomies, etc.
Some of the coolest parts:
* Playing Karen’s podcast of TTT on some great speakers and walking to the back of the room while she invoked what technologies are heaeded our way. After the cast, I went back up front and posed a questions: How many of the trends she mentioned have hit on in the talk so far? Quite a few actually as we moved through blogging, podcasting, photo blogging, folksonomies, etc.
* Discussing customizable RSS feeds of new library materials and seeing a lady in the back make a thumbs up! I said “”Thumbs up! You just made my day.”
* Having in attendance the Dean of Purdue University Libraries who taught my Library Management class at IUSB in 1995! Throughout my talks these days I emphasis education and buy-in of adminstration is key to successful tech-based initiatives in libraries. How cool to have him there…and on the front row!
* Dining the night before with Scott Brandt and Rebecca Richardson, who arranged the presentation, and covering such topics as the merits and drawbacks of podcasting (“That podcasting is so hot right now..and so is Hansel.”), librarians who blog, research studies with titles longer than this whole post!, and some interesting theories concerning reality television.
* The two folks in the back that had been discussing flickr on the way to the presentation and then whooped when I demonstrated photo-blogging and tagging! (and who nodded and smiled big everytime I said “RSS”)
* The idea of internal communication enhanced by a blog intrigued many of the folks. Twice, questions brought us back to the slides where I demonstrated how we turned our Intranet into a bunch of blogs at SJCPL!
Here are my materials from the day:
