Demonstration session 1 -- 2.0 in yo face!

We all do things we aren't proud of -- but sometimes you have to take one for the team. Last night's All Conference event was one such time for me. It seems I would remember how much I disliked 1980s clothing in the 1980s -- but no the prospect of seeing a colleague (Lauren) be Belinda Carlisle was too strong -- and so I agreed to dress up and play air-bass to "Lips are Sealed" by the GoGos. So when that video surfaces on Youtube -- please don't hold it against me or any future political ambitions I may have. :-P


I attended the Demonstration Session sponsored by UCD this morning. These Demos took the place of the Poster Sessions from last year. I was told that the presentation the IT group and I did last year inspired the UCD to change the format -- :) *blush* ah shucks. You hear that IT folks? We done good!

So the Demos this morning were mainly from SLIS students -- but they were good. It's refreshing to see the up and coming librarians getting experience using 2.0 technologies.

The first demo was from Robin Leech and Steve Locy at OSU. The asked the question, for the OSU libraries, Instant Messaging: are we 2.0 yet?. OSU has been testing Instant Messaging reference using Trillian b/c it's cross IM service capabilities. They looked at using Trillian, GIAM, and Miranda -- but I guess not Meebo (which I found interesting). They are answering questions via AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, and ICQ -- and over a 5 month period answered a little over 130 questions. Not too bad a start.

The second Demo was by the creator of the OLISSA blog -- a nice summary of the need for the blog to help SLIS students better manage the info overload via RSS instead of a plethora of emails.

Next was Jenn 2.0 (mentioned earlier this week) -- and her project of the Ambient Librarian. This project is meant to be a clearinghouse of materials, articles, etc for Information Professionals. She explained the basics of wikis and how other can contribute to this resource.

Rebecca Howard talked about her Bibliotherapy Wiki -- an interesting project which tries to create a dialog of therapy via books -- right now it just links to TCCL resources but with a little wiki editing help I bet people could help her link the titles to Open Worldcat.

Lastly was a professor from the OU SLIS who highlighted teaching 2.0 when you may not be 2.0 yourself. She highlighted many of the projects her students had done over the past semester.

Over all it was a good session -- and I liked how UCD shook up the format. I hope in the future OLA considers moving these Demos later in the day -- 7:45 the conference area is sparse -- and these tips and tools are things all librarians need to see -- plus these students are our future -- if you don't see what your potential employees can do -- how do you know what to look for?