Overview of NetSpeed 2008

A conference is a good opportunity to learn about what other libraries are doing. NetSpeed is a technology-focused conference, providing an opportunity to learn about what other libraries are doing in the technology aspect.

All the sessions in the conference sounded interesting. Unfortunately I could not attend them all. I chose four I liked the best.

The first one was about Calgary Public Library’s blogs. They started with Google Blogger last year, and then switched to Community Server this July. So far they have set up several blogs, talking about things like books, food, gardening, etc. The weblogs are maintained by ongoing collaboration between IT and Customer Services Staff throughout the system.

The second session was about U of A Library’s experience with the Screen Recorder software, Camtasia. U of A now has the so-called one-desk service. Before the one-desk service, they had a reference desk and a circulation desk in each library, which sometimes caused confusion among students because they did not know which desk they should go to. Now, there is only one desk doing both reference and circulation. Both former reference staff and circulation staff are working at this one desk, which means former reference staff have to do circulation, and former circulation staff have to do reference. Former reference staff found that circulation was a hard job because there were so many policies and procedures to learn about. So they developed this online screen casting session to train staff on how to do circulation. Staff can use this session at anytime and can go back to it as many times as they want. It was very convenient. There were narration and little quizzes, and you can also incorporate PowerPoint into it. You may download Camtasia from the Internet and use it for free for 30 days.

The third session is about podcasting. NAIT created an online tour using the podcast software called iMovie. But iMovie is only available on Mac, not on PC. It was easy to use. The final product has background music, narration, and pictures.

The last session is about a serial analysis toolkit used in University of Saskatchewan Library. It is a neat tool, but more suitable to big library systems, not really beneficial to small libraries like us. However, it is still nice to know that there is such a tool existing.