Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Last Week

This is the final week of the semester. The library is preparing to have our entire phone system replaced, so we have had training on using the new phones and such.
I am happy to say that PCC now has a link resolver that allows students to use Google Scholar and link to the resources in our databases and catalogs, as well as any other scholarly materials available for free on the web.
I demonstrated the use of Google Scholar during my interview for my job here, and pushed for its integration. After some initial research, another librarian, Leslie, went through the proper channels to acquire a link resolver service so that our library could participate using Google Scholar. Now it is partially my job to make certain that students are aware of this service, what it does, how it might help them, and its limitations so that it does not go unused.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Spring Semester winds down.

As the Spring Semester winds down, I begin to prepare for the projects I would like to complete this summer prior to the Fall Semester beginning. Diana and Jared, the two library technicians here, will help to weed through our Reserve Textbooks. Diana will lead this project due to her familiarity with this area and being that she has been in charge of the Reserve textbooks. Jared will continue to learn from Diana and will maintain the Instructor Reserves that I recently completed weeding.
We will also need to hire 3-4 Student Assistants this summer and promote one Assistant to a Supervisor position. I hope to train all of these candidates prior to the Fall Semester.
I will use the summer to complete my lesson planning for LIB 103, which I will teach in the Fall, and to perfect and improve the Social Networking pages that I have created with the goal of sharing and advertising them to students in the Fall. One setback may be our network, but hopefully all upgrades will be complete and we will be able to open up the broadband restrictions here so that Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and other Web 2.0 applications can be used to their full capabilities.