Thursday, August 30, 2007

Slam the Boards Outreach for IPL? (9/10)

One of the outreach activities that has been discussed among the IPL staff is to organize something in tandem with the "Slam the Boards" activity on September 10. Here's info about 'Slam the Boards':

" An idea has been propagating through various librarian listservs, bulletin boards, etc., to show how well a library professional answers a reference question.
On September 10, librarians will voluntarily choose an answer service listed on the site below and answer as many questions as they can, as well as they are able.
It's a great chance to market your libraries and librarians.
http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Slam+the+Boards!?t=anon "

If Outreach and Reference Teams wanted to get together on this, we could have a 'Slam the Boards' event on Sept 10 in which we'd promote the Internet Public Library as our info organization.

See the "Projects" link on the "Assignment" page in our course site for more ideas!

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Roles at the Internet Public Library

This semester we are running the Internet Public Library, a fully-featured digital library which has online collections, teaching functions, reference services, and community outreach efforts. We'll form working teams as in any information organization, and take on roles in running this digital library. Here are some of the available roles, and note that you can and probably will take on more than one role during our semester-long learning experience:

IPL Collections Team

The IPL Collections Team will work on projects in managing and updating the IPL's collections, and building new resources.

Collections Team Leader
Collections Researcher
Collections Builder
Collections Web Designer
Collections Archivist
Collections Graphics Designer

IPL Reference Team

The IPL Reference Team will work on projects in managing and running the IPL's online reference service, answering questions and performing reference administration.

Reference Team Leader
Reference Administrator
Reference Librarian
Reference Archivist

IPL Education Team

The IPL Education Team will work on teaching and training projects such as creating training documents and teaching videos and presenting workshops for IPL teachers, students, and users.

Education Team Leader
Education Researcher
Education Curriculum Builder
Education Web Designer
Education Graphics Designer

IPL Community Outreach Team

The IPL Community Outreach Team will work on publicity features such as press releases, outreach efforts to new communities of users, and sustainability/funding efforts.

Community Outreach Team Leader
Community Outreach Researcher
Community Outreach Writer/Publicist
Community Outreach Web Designer
Community Outreach Graphics Designer

If you have special skills not reflected in this list that you'd like to suggest as a new role (for example, systems designer/programmer), discuss this with me. As an information organization, we support creative and innovative thinking, so please feel free to share your ideas and suggest roles that are 'outside the box' of what has been listed here.