Today started before my normal arrival time with a planning meeting for an email migration for ~300 staff that was supposed to happen tomorrow. We have not been getting the communication we need to ready staff (and ourselves) for the migration, so we will hold off until we have the answers we need. I have small niggling fears that the noncommunicative unit may just go ahead and migrate us anyway, but we’ll see (fingers crossed!). I have reminded myself that I need to pull the training materials together and get all that organized
Got into my office, booted everything up, and made sure that the software I need for the (first!) one-on-one training I’m doing this afternoon has been installed, and confirmed the meeting. Found some graduate assistant help for preparing to send out training materials to the folks scheduled to migrate. Spent an hour going through various emails and social networking accounts and browser tabs left open for my attention (yikes! some have been waiting for over a week!). Sent out training announcements to library staff, printed out a few calls for papers, and filed some interesting new articles that came across my search alerts.
Productivity gave way to collegiality when I had a nice surprise visit with a friend and colleague who has been on a long vacation. Chatting is an important part of workplace social glue, you know.
Began prepping to show a colleague how to use SnagIt. It’s been ages since I used it. And to refresh myself, I took the video tour. Wow. RTFM indeed — I learned an awful lot in a very short time! Which is great, because my colleague showed up 30 minutes early. The session went well, she got what she needed to get started, we discussed some other tools that might do what she needs, and she knows to call me if she needs more help.
I spent a few more minutes going through the interwebs and culling interesting stuff into the various places I send or keep track of things (Google Plus, Delicious, Twitter, Evernote, OneNote, Read It Later…). I came across a librarian blogging her personal 23 Things and found myself inspired! (ah, magical inspiration, that mythic leap from point A to point S with no traceable path:) Maybe it’s the Grateful Dead jamming away int eh background? Who knows?) . I’ve been wanting to set up a perpetual hybrid 23 Things-type ongoing training, and I think I know how now! I’ve put together a OneNote on the subject and am typing as fast as my fingers will let me — my brain is outpacing my wpm 🙂
A nice, slow, summer day in the life of a librarian.
Deepening the Conversation 
July 26, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Please share the 23 things thing…I am trying to get a post together about the tech and aps I can’t live without, so far it’s not coming together.
Maybe if I change my name (because when someone says my name they always follow it with a problem or question!)
I am not familiar with SnagIt, but don’t you get crazy using to many different communication and information gathering aps?
July 26, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Barb, you’ll hear all about the 23 Things thing 🙂 It’s for deploying at UIUC. I’ll post about it here when it’s ready to go, but you’ll hear about it before then at a Tech Training Committee meeting.
SnagIt is a screen capture program, very powerful and easy to use.
And yes, there is some crazy-making in using so many tools, but I rarely have to spend more than a microsecond deciding which place to stash/track/post a document or update (although I doubt I could articulate that…)
Aside from that, part of the job (a pretty big part) is trying out the new tools and sussing out the potential for use in library situations. And getting myself up to speed on them before folks come to me asking for help using them themselves 🙂