Attention Academic Librarians – Don’t Miss These Useful Posts

I go back to school next week! And classes officially begin September 4th! The summer has flown – but there’s still time to read some great posts about innovation and outreach that academic librarians might find most useful. What are the goals for your academic library this year? Increased use? A gathering place for students to collaborate and learn — and create content?

Best Facebook Apps for Colleges

How might academic librarians use some of these popular apps?

12 Ways to use Facebook Professionally

Nice companion to the above.

Raising our Game – ideas for the next phase of Gaming @ the Georgia Tech Library at the Ubiquitous Librarian

P0ker? Halo 3? Projecting the big game on the library wall? Fascinating ideas from Brian Mathews…which leads to:

Brian’s Recap of the CeLIBration event at his university library welcoming incoming students

Doors opened at 7pm and we didn’t schedule any activities until 8. We wanted to give everyone the chance to grab some food and wander around. Our objective was to fit 30-60 people in different areas throughout the library. This gets them in and around the building.

Board games were very popular, as was DDR. Retro video games (from the 1980’s) were not so much, but that’s because Macs suck we had some computer problems with our non-Windows operating system.

Speed-dating was a success. Several librarians from other schools have laughed at me for this—and that’s fine, go on hating. We had 3 full sessions, again. We moved it into our gallery, added tablecloths, small mirrors, and flowers, together with a small floating candle—it was very classy; many people called it Parisian. We also raffled away several pairs of movie tickets to female participants to help get things started. Nice work J.S. Shout out to Mr. Hines on the mic.

Improv Comedy is not my really thing, but the students loved. They had a big audience (50+) for two performances. If you have performance groups on campus you should invite them in from time to time.

Ninja Tag was wild. I watched one round and was worried someone would get hurt. It was fast and violent—so hence, very cool. The pictures don’t do justice to how dark it was. There was also loud music blasting. This year we doubled the playing space (got rid of some antiqued books!) and I hear we added an extra round. This event was in great demand. The setup was very labor intensive otherwise I’d advocate we do this monthly on a Friday night. Essentially it is a game of team tag played on a darkened floor with black lights. Ninja t-shirts were given to winning teams. Nice work B.T. (Stay East)

P0ker was packed. I had space for 40 players, but there was greater demand. I had to turn a lot of disappointed people away and felt bad. Never underestimate the appeal of gambling. I bought 800 chips (20 for each player) and several decks of cards. We gave away a rad trophy along with a $100 prize. Because of campus regulations, I could not give a gift card, but had to award a “real” prize, therefore I asked the champion to select something from Best Buy / Amazon to be sent to him. Custom prizes are better anyway. Thanks for the help C.B. and the Security Team.

Does p0ker in the library make you bristle? Does speed-dating more suited for the student union? Seems to me such activities meant to acquaint new students with the library space and the librarians themselves are rather spot on given the current climate we live in. Read Brian’s parting thoughts as well. I am so glad he’s trying out such events and reporting the results.

Learning 2.0 from 21st Century Collaborative

Web 2.0 – and ultimately School 2.0 — is all about this two-way or group communication. The Web is no longer just a place to search for resources. It’s a place to find people, to exchange ideas, to demonstrate our creativity before an audience. The Internet has become not only a great curriculum resource but a great learning resource. The second generation Web is in fact, laying the foundation for ideas such as Classroom 2.0, Teacher 2.0 and Learning 2.0.

Excellent thought-provoking post on the nature of learning and education.

And finally, this from Jeff Trzceiak at McMaster University:

EDUCAUSE Top Ten List of Teaching and Learning Issues

1. Establishing and supporting a culture of evidence
2. Demonstrating improvement of learning
3. Translating learning research into practice
4. Selecting appropriate models and strategies for e-learning
5. Providing tools to meet growing student expectations
6. Providing professional development and support to new audiences
7. Sharing content, applications, and application development
8. Protecting institutional data
9. Addressing emerging ethical challenges
10. Understanding the evolving role of academic technologists

While this seems focused on academic technology professionals I see many similarities with libraries as well. With a few minor additions/adjustments this list could easily be a “top 10? for libraries as we move forward.

So much to think about. So many exciting opportunities. What amongst these posts inspires you?