Week 3: Online Meetings

This was not my first webinar, but I always enjoy what I learn each time I participate in one. Over the past year + I've been able to attend/view a few archived, as well as live sessions. Here at the Coffey County Library we are also an ELMeR site and I have had the privilege of listening in on a few classes with it. Thank goodness for the Wimba session on Iluminar!! I was so lost before that lesson! Whew! The KS Tax Form webinar was also great and provided answers to our patrons many questions about "why are there no state forms." They are still not too happy when we tell them why, but at least we are acurately answering their questions right? :)

This week I listened to an archived OPAL session titled "Gaming & Libraries." It was hosted by Tom Peters, but was originally presented on July 15, 2005 by Matt Gullett, Kelly Czarnecki, Lori Bell, Chad Brekke, Chuck Thacker, and Diane Colletti at the Bloomington (IL) Public Library.

A co-worker and I listened to this session together, in hopes of offering a similar program at our library. The information was very useful and gave us some great sites to check out as well as answered questions about how many staff would be needed and how many children to allow to attend the event.

One library mentioned that they use their YA webpage to advertise this information. Since we are part of a library system, we don't have our own individual webpages. However, this gave me the idea to create a blog (thank you week 1 lesson!) of events that we could post on our facebook page. The Burlington Branch currently has over 300 friends, most of them being pre-teens/teens, so this may be an effective method of increasing program awareness and attendance. Monica also had the idea of creating a Burlington Young Adult & Burlington Children's Program Fan Page where we could also advertise events, such as a Gaming Night.

I think this new technology is outstanding and has the potential to be utilized in a big way over the next 10 years. It's convenient and nice that you can do it from your home base whenever you have time. I know that I am going to investigate other webinars available in hopes of finding ideas for senior programming. I sometimes forget that these tools are available. I hope after this week's lesson it will stick around in my brain a little longer :)

Week 2: Why I LOVE Facebook

I have had a facebook account now for the last couple of years and I have to say I am addicted. It's been awesome for me because almost all of my family and close friends are on there, which makes staying in touch much easier. Here's the best part:

I have a half-brother, who I had only met once in my lifetime (when I was 10). I had always wondered about him, but never really knew how to go about contacting him and wasn't even sure if he'd want to know me. I'd searched for him on facebook several times, but with no luck. Then, one day last March I noticed I had a message in my inbox. When I went to check it I was shocked to see his name on my screen. We had both been thinking about each other. Crazy! Since then we have kept in touch and have met for dinners and he even came to our family's fish fry this summer. It has been great getting to know my brother! All Thanks to Facebook :)

Look me up on facebook under Elizabeth Pugh. My e-mail address is bpugh@mail.cclibks.org

Week Two: Social Networking

So....today I set up a Ning account. I have to say that I am not getting the point. Hmmmm. I think I may need to do a little more exploring. Let me know if anyone else sets up an account on ning so we can "follow" each other.

Here is the address for the page I created
http://elizabethsfaves.ning.com/

Week One: Blogging

I did it! I really did it! I feel like now I can do anything in life :) Well, at least I'm on the road to new and improved!

About Me

Hi everyone! My name is Elizabeth and I work at the Coffey County Library-Burlington Branch, where I am the Assistant Branch Director. I started in 2002 as a Library Assistant and then was hired for the ABD position in 2005! With my new position I was given the privilege of doing the children's programming. I enjoy it so much! The kids are hilarious and it gives me an opportunity to be creative, which I LOVE!

I am so excited to be a part of this program and to learn about some of these new tools that are available. I'm only 26, but it seems like I am so far out of the technology loop already, so this will hopefully help catch me back up. Many of the youth that come into the library use some of these sites, so it will be nice to be able to answer any questions that come up, though I'm betting they will be answering more of mine :) It will also be great to use some of these networking sites for our library to better promote our programs and materials we have available. I think this is going to be a big benefit to our library as well as to myself. Thanks!

Yay for my first blog!! I did it. This should come in handy for summer reading ideas as well as just general program idea sharing. Excellent :)