Technology Leaders: How'd we do that?

--Tag cloud of a portion of the Champlain College Library website

We've been experimenting! We're continually trying out free or inexpensive web-based services to improve our web presence. Here's a quick review....

Social media

The library has accounts on both Twitter and Facebook that we maintain and update regularly. We're using these tools for a number of reasons. First, they allow us to learn about our users and get feedback. Second, we're using them to engage with our users and help them with questions. Finally, it's a way to increase awareness of the library, it's resources, and the services it offers to faculty, staff, and students.

Polling applications

We've just started experimenting in the classroom with a web-based polling application called Poll Everywhere. It allows participants to vote in polls via text message, a web page, an embeddable widget, and even Twitter. We're using the technology to make classes more engaging and fun. 

Screencasting and videos

We are currently using both Camtasia and Captivate to produce in-house staff training tools and publicly-available tutorials. We've also used Jing to create a quick screencast of finding SWOT analyses. We plan on continuing our use of these technologies in the future and adding additonal useful tutorials to our website.

Instant message reference

We have recently made our IM reference service more prominent by moving it to our homepage. Using a widget from Digsby it makes it quick and easy to simply type a question right into your browser and get an answer back. Digsby allows us to monitor multiple IM accounts simultanesously.

Tracking reference questions

We wrote a Zoho Creator web-based data collection form to track reference questions. The number of reference questions that get logged has increased dramatically, people can see what kinds of questions have been asked earlier in the day, and it's easy to download data for analysis.

Wikis

Our subject guides are in pbwiki (http://champlaincollegelibrary.pbwiki.com/). Currently, the wiki platform allows multiple librarians to easily create or edit any subject guide. We have also created wiki-based course guides with resources tailored to specific classes.

In addition, the Circulation Department maintains an internal communications wiki in Wikidot that goes a long way toward ensuring that accurate information is communicated throughout a staff whose schedules don't overlap regularly.

Photostreaming

We are using Flickr to highlight portions of our print collection, exhibit book displays, show pictures of different library events and give users a virtual tour of the Miller Information Commons. Our photo stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/millerinfocommons

RSS

In order to make our homepage more dynamic, and make announcements and news easily editable by all the staff, we added a customized RSS widget from RSS Pump. All you have to do is enter the url of the feed and give your widget a title. We set up a blog through Blogger that we can all post to, and the widget automatically updates as we post new items.

Why are we using so much free stuff?

Our goal is for library to become a campus technology leader, and these projects have contributed to that effort through the thoughtful and creative application of new technologies to support library initiatives.  Although we recognize that relying on free web-based services for these projects is risky in that the service providers could fail at any time (and have), it has enabled us to move forward much more quickly than any other solution would have.

Updated Oct. 2010