Catch Up: CPD23 17 & 19

Well, I lagged behind again, as it seems that CPD23 has ended, but my posts have not! Taking a look back at the topics missing:

Thing 17 - Prezi and Slideshare

I have only experienced these two in the role of watcher, not as a creator. I do have a Prezi account, however I have not had a project that I feel comfortable yet in attempting to try it out with? The enhanced abilities that you have with Prezi seem to make it a very useful way to present material that may focus a bit more on discussion than slides. Now that there is an import function to enhance PowerPoint slides and recreate the presentation, I may take apart one of mine as a trial run.

I have seen a lot of great presentations on Slideshare, but we keep most of our training materials in-house. Also, we do rely a lot more on webinar and hands-on training, so we do not have a multitude of presentations that need to be stored and shared in one place. However, I find it very useful both for learning and for gathering ideas.

Thing 19 - Reflection on Integration

We have covered a lot of social media and how it can assist professionally. I still need to fill in more detail on my LinkedIn page, have cleaned out my Google Reader feeds - especially in preparation for the upcoming changes, use Twitter both for knowledge gathering and receiving, and have started to feel more comfortable hearing my voice come out of the computer during web tutorials.

As I get ready to finish up CPD23 and reflect on how this project has inspired me to access more information technology, I am faced with deciding what will happen to this blog once I am finished. I originally started this because I wanted to separate my "professional" and "personal" posts a bit more, so that people strictly interested in my work did not have to wander through my posts on knitting and chickens. However, I have felt spread thin, and wonder if it is time to evaluate whether or not I will fold it all back into one blog. I hope that by the time I actually finish this course, I will have that answer.

Ebook Notes

Oh, do I have a lot to catch up on and finish finally for CPD23, but until then let me touch on the topics that have been on the forefront of my mind dealing with ebooks:

Kindle for Libraries is now available through OverDrive! Our member libraries were SO thrilled when this happened. It also gave me an excuse to finally buckle down and work with Jing for some tutorials on borrowing and returning ebooks on the device. These videos actually went up on our website, so feel free to take a look.

On the flip side, many are concerned about the ramifications that the amount of control Amazon has in the checkout and borrowing process, about patron privacy, and the usual fears about not keeping up with demand. Bobbi Newman at Librarian By Day says "We Got Screwed"; Library Journal had an editorial that it was a "triumph of practicality over principles". Many librarians, including me, think that Amazon already has their Kindle owners by the *ahem* device, so are patrons really thinking about what information is passed on or stored? Does that give us a license to not care either, or will it be even more important to educate our patrons and remind them we do support their privacy?

I know that in the Kindle Library of my Amazon account any books I borrow through OverDrive are archived there. On the plus side, this also facilitates the storage and retrieval of any notes or highlights if I borrow or buy the same title. On the negative side, how do I know it was a library book? It says it was a library book in big orange letters:

Now, I can delete these titles from my Kindle Library, but who is going to actually do that on a regular basis? Also, if I delete them, will that mean all my notes and highlights will be gone if I do decide to purchase or borrow the book again? Will anyone think it is worth the trouble?

This was a small part of the discussion in yesterday's Library Journal/School Library Journal Ebook Summit, titled Ebooks: The New Normal. How libraries are purchasing, promoting and using ebooks are just a few of the topics that were presented. I was happy to be able to listen to the discussions from the panels through the day, and it led to some great Twitter conversations along the way. Check out the hashtag #ebksmt, and I will definitely be going back into the archives to catch some more of the details. There are some great notes available on from Sharon Moreland's Lybrarian blog.

Did anyone else attend the Summit? What did you bring away?