Visually appealing and energizing slideshows are the lifeblood of conference presentations. But using animated PowerPoints or zooming Prezis to dizzy audiences delivers little more appeal than packing slides with text on a low-contrast background. Key to winning hearts and minds are visual flair AND minimalism, humor, and innovative use of technology. Memes Delightfully whimsical, memes are a fantastic ice-breaker and laugh-inducer. My last two library conference presentations used variants of the crowdpleasing “One does not simply…” Boromir meme above, which never fails to generate laughter and praise. Memes.com offers great selections, is free of annoying popup ads, and is less likely than other meme generators to be blocked by your workplace’s Internet filters for being “tasteless.” (Yes, I speak from personal experience…) Keep Calm-o-matic Do you want your audience to chuckle and identify with you? Everyone who’s ever panicked or worked under a deadline will appreciate the Keep Calm-o-matic. As with memes, variations are almost infinite. Recite This Planning to include…
Category: General information
Midwinter Workshop Highlight: Meet the Field Research Presenter!
We asked our LITA Midwinter Workshop Presenters to tell us a little more about themselves and what to expect from their workshops in January. This week, we’re hearing from Wayne Johnston, who will be presenting the workshop: Developing mobile apps to support field research (For registration details, please see the bottom of this blog post) LITA: Can you tell us a little more about you? Wayne: I am currently Head of Research Enterprise and Scholarly Communication at the University of Guelph Library. Prior to joining the Library I worked for the United Nations in both New York and Geneva. My international experience includes work I’ve done in Ghana, Nepal, Croatia and Canada’s Arctic. LITA: Who is your target audience for this workshop? Wayne: I think this workshop will be most relevant to academic librarians who are supporting research activity on their campuses. It may be of particular interest to those working…
Are you an iPad or a laptop?
I’ve never been a big tablet user. This may come as a surprise to some, given that I assist patrons with their tablets every day at the public library. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Nexus 7 tablet. It’s perfect for reading ebooks, using Twitter, and watching Netflix; but the moment I want to respond to an email, edit a photo, or work my way through a Treehouse lesson, I feel helpless. Several library patrons have asked me if our public computers will be replaced by iPads and tablets. It’s hard to say where technology will take us in the coming years, but I strongly believe that a library without computers would leave us severely handicapped. One of our regular library patrons, let’s call her Jane, is a diehard iPad fan. She is constantly on the hunt for the next great app and enjoys sharing her finds with me…
Midwinter Workshop Highlight: Meet the Programming Presenter!
We asked our LITA Midwinter Workshop Presenters to tell us a little more about themselves and what to expect from their workshops in January. This week, we’re hearing from Elizabeth Wickes, who will be presenting the workshop: Introduction to Practical Programming (For registration details, please see the bottom of this blog post) LITA: We’ve seen your formal bio but can you tell us a little more about you? Elizabeth: I once wrote an entire Python program just so I could have a legitimate reason to say “for skittle in skittles.” Attendees will meet this program during the workshop. I can also fix pretty much anything with hot glue. LITA: Who is your target audience for this workshop? Elizabeth: This workshop speaks to the librarian or library student who is curious about programming and wants to explore it within a very library-centric context. So many of the existing books and resources on programming…
Midwinter Workshop Highlight: Meet the UX Presenters!
We asked our LITA Midwinter Workshop Presenters to tell us a little more about themselves and what to expect from their workshops in January. This week, we’re hearing from Kate Lawrence, Deirdre Costello, and Robert Newell, who will be presenting the workshop: From Lost to Found: How User Testing Can Improve the User Experience of Your Library Website (For registration details, please see the bottom of this blog post) LITA: We’ve seen your formal bios but can you tell us a little more about you? Kate: If I didn’t work as a user researcher, I would be a professional backgammon player or cake decorator (I am a magician with fondant!). Or both. Deirdre: I’m horse crazy! Robert: In a past life I was a professional actor. If you pay really really close attention (like, don’t blink), you might spot me in a few episodes of Friday Night Lights or Prison…
Shifting & Merging
It has been exactly seven weeks since I moved to Bloomington, Indiana, yet I finally feel like I have arrived. Let me rewind, quick, and tell you a little about my background. During my last two years of undergrad at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), I spent my time working on as many Digital Humanities (DH) projects and jobs as I possibly could in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. [DH is a difficult concept to define because everyone does it through various means, for various reasons. To me, it means using computational tools to analyze or build humanities projects. This way, we can find patterns we wouldn’t see through the naked eye, or display physical objects digitally for greater access.] By day, I studied English and Computer Science, and by night, my fingers scurried over my keyboard encoding poems, letters, and aphorisms. I worked at the Walt Whitman Archive,…
A Tested* Approach to Leveling Up
*Unscientifically, by a person from the internet. If you’re a LITA member, then you’re probably very skilled in a few technical areas, and know just enough to be dangerous in several other areas. The later can be a liability if you’ve just been volunteered to implement the Great New Tech Thing at your library. Do it right, and you just might be recognized for your ingenuity and hard work (finally!). Do it wrong, and you’ll end up in the pillory (again!). Maybe the Great New Tech Thing requires you to learn a new programming or markup language. Perhaps you’re looking to expand on your skills–and resume–by adding a language. For many years, the library associations and schools have emphasized tech skills as an essential component of librarianship. The reasons are plentiful, and the means are easier that you might think. With a library card, a few free, open source software…
The Password Dilemma
One-on-one technology help is one of the greatest services offered by the modern public library. Our ability to provide free assistance without an underlying agenda to sell a product puts us in a unique and valuable position in our communities. While one-on-one sessions are one of my favorite job duties, I must admit that they can also be the most frustrating, primarily because of passwords. It is rare that I assist a patron and we don’t encounter a forgotten password, if not several. Trying to guess the password or resetting it usually eats up most of our time. I wish that I were writing this post as an authority on how to conquer the war on passwords, but I fear that we’re losing the battle. One day we’ll look back and laugh at the time we wasted trying to guess our passwords; resetting them again and again, but it’s been…
An Interview with LITA Emerging Leader Annie Gaines
1. Tell us about your library job. What do you love most about it? I am the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Idaho. This is a brand new position within the library and also my first ‘real’ librarian job, so it’s been a constant learning experience. I work along with the Digital Initiatives Librarian on the various digital projects happening at the library, including building an institutional repository, creating digital collections, redesigning the library website, creating and managing open access journals, and working on VIVO (a semantic-web application we are using as a front-end to our IR). I also do some education and advocacy around copyright, author’s rights, open access, etc. The thing I love most about this job (aside from being able to design websites in crayon – image attached) is taking an idea and bringing it into fruition. Whether it’s a digital collection of postcards with…
An Interview with LITA Emerging Leader Kyle Denlinger
1. Tell us about your library job. What do you love most about it? My job as eLearning Librarian is equal parts project manager, instructional designer, information literacy teacher, and instructional technologist, with some multimedia producer and reference librarian thrown in to keep things interesting. My main initiative right now is the continuing development of ZSRx, my library’s series of open online courses for Wake Forest alumni and parents. What I love most about my job is that I’m empowered to act on big ideas, I get to do a bunch of creative work, and I get to do it all alongside some of the best coworkers and faculty colleagues you could find anywhere. 2. Where do you see yourself going from here? I would *love* to eventually head up a team that serves as a resource for faculty who want to better integrate technology and library resources into their…