Wednesday, January 31, 2007

IF WE DO THIS KIND OF THING THEY WILL USE OUR RESOURCES NO MATTER WHAT WE CALL THEM

Take a look at the Princeton Public Library Technology Center at the class calendar and gadget garage. http://princeton.lib.nj.us/research/techcenter/classes.html. We could do drop in instead of registration for a lot of the stuff. Using the gadget garage concept and classes is more effective than just classes I think.

I talked to Cindy about being able to use the laptops with wireless to show people how to download etc. She is going to look into this and I think it will be an easy thing to get going. Also John is putting up Meebo on a test site and we decided to use Google mail for the Ask A Librarian mailbox instead of Groupwise. John will let you know when you can play with IM.

2 comments:

Marcie said...

The gadget garage is really cool! Can staff play too?

I think Ref staff at my own branch would be up for holding regular classes. The Internet 1 on 1 sessions went really well when we first started them, but they dropped off after a few years and are now basically non-existant. We do a lot of ad hoc training on both the Internet and databases instead. Classes on more than just Internet would be well-attended, I would imagine. And if we had a small lab with computers for patrons to use during the class, that would be ideal.

Cat's Meow said...

Yes, being able to use the laptops to demo a download *all* the way would be fabulous!

Our ebook demo week that we did was a great success. I am always frustrated I can't walk people through the steps...

see it, do it, = learn it, and *use it* :)

The demo on demand ability would be a nice thing to have...