Thing 19 – Catch up week on integrating things

As part of thing 19 we are encouraged to review some of the tools we have covered. I am going to review Google Docs and Dropbox as I am interested in finding a tool to help with a specific problem.

The Problem

We work as a joint library service serving Keele University staff and students as well as our local NHS trusts. Whilst most of our library staff work at the library we have an Outreach team who work across the trusts, using trust networks. Thus sharing documents can become a problem.

The Opportunity

Can cloud-based tools allow us to share documents with colleagues?

Potential Issues

Our NHS organisations provide quite a controlled network environment and this results in a large number of tools, applications and websites being blocked. Users are also prevented from downloading applications to their pcs.

Google Docs

Unfortunately Google docs was blocked by our NHS trusts. Thus it could not be used to share documents.

Dropbox

Dropbox was not blocked as a website on pcs connecting via the trust network. However this tool does rely on a download. Thus our colleagues would not be able to download and install this application. It was also not helpful that the application could only be linked to a c: drive folder rather than a network folder, so it proved not be very helpful to me either.

Thing 18 – Jing / screen capture / podcasts

Thing 18 is looking at multimedia tools.

Jing

Jing is a screen-capture tool, allowing you to create videos of on-screen activity.

ScreenR

We actually use ScreenR for this. It is a similar tool but you don’t need to download any elements. You can see some examples on our YouTube channel. We are creating these as part of our etutorial presentations. You do have to be well prepared before starting to record – what to say, the order to demonstrate something; and if you have to restart more than 4 times, do it another day.

I often just use an image editing tool to capture single screenshots and add additional elements.

Podcasting

The only time I have used podcasting was when I signed up for a radio 2 series of programmes. But I don’t think that this medium suits me – I don’t tend to listen to radio programmes.

I haven’t created stand-alone audio elements. It is something that I have often thought about – creating an audio tour of the library for example (similar to tours used in museums) but I’m not sure how popular they would be. Has anyone done this successfully? It always feels like the visual element is required these days.

Audacity

I have used audacity frequently to create the audio element of our etutorials. We incorporate the audio files created into mediator which we use to create the flash-based tutorials.

Summary

Over the past year I have experimented with a number of tools to create multi-media elements to use in the etutorials that we have been developing. It has been a steep learning curve and I’m sure that there are many improvements to be made but everyone has to start somewhere.

Thing 17 – The medium is the message – Prezi and Slideshare

We’re back to looking at tools in thing 17 – this time using presentation tools.

Prezi

I have used Prezi for a while now, Dec 2011 according to my account. I have seen some really great prezis but I’m afraid that my offerings don’t fall into that category. It can be pretty time consuming but gradually over time you learn about the different options and functionality. My first offering was about my job role and my latest is an interactive map of ourlibrary floor plan – including images and videos. It can be quite stomach-churning, but then we are a circular library and wandering around in real-life can make you dizzy too. I’ve now embedded this into our website. I have a couple more in development.

I think prezis offer something a bit more fun than powerpoints, though powerpoint can also be quite interactive and use multimedia; it also requires a lot of work to get something effective.

Slideshare

I’m familiar with Slideshare as a consumer. I often check out other people’s presentations. However I’ve not shared anything myself. It is not currently part of my role to create presentations and deliver talks. I did create a powerpoint presentation to promote our etutorials but decided to convert this to a video and share it via YouTube rather than use Slideshare.

Summary

Both these tools offer a good way to share your presentations.

Thing 16 – Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published

I’ve little to say on thing 16. I suppose the only area of advocacy that I have been involved in is the promotion of the service I work in, as well as supporting colleagues in gathering information for stakeholder feedback.

It is important that any service that you provide is recognised by your users and can be demonstrated as contributing to the wider goals of the organisation that you work for – otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

Thing 15 – Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

I don’t really have much to contribute to thing 15. I haven’t attended any conferences, certainly not presented anything anywhere (oh wait, does giving a talk about my job on a tour day count? You can see it here and you didn’t even have to visit) and even training events feel like a luxury these days.

My colleagues are investigating whether we should do something to present / publish our experience creating out etutorial packages. I have to admit that I have been somewhat cool on the idea. I’m thinking – well, it’s hardly ground-breaking stuff, like landing on Mars or solving the Greek debt crisis; we probably stole observed, reflected, incorporated someone else’s ideas anyway; we’re not conducting life-changing research just trying to get someone to come into the library and use our resources.

Thing 14 – Zotero, Medeley, CiteULike

Organising references is discussed in Thing 14 and 3 tools are mentioned Zotero, Mendeley and CiteULike.

Back in the day, I found it easier to manage my own list as otherwise I was dependent on software only available via the university network. Luckily things have moved on.

RefWorks

We subscribe to Refworks at the university and as long as you have a username and password you can access this on the network and from home. I don’t use it extensively myself - limited to a once a year gathering of local research published. Importing and managing references seems pretty straight forward but the “cite while you right” functionality seems a bit clunky.

Reference Manager

At the NHS trust that I worked for previously we used Reference Manager. We only had a specific number of licences for the networked–based product but it certainly seemed pretty sophisticated and I used it to manage reference lists of our employees published work. The “cite while you right” function also seemed to work more seamlessly.

Connotea

I have experimented with online referencing tools and the one I chose to use was Connotea. I use this to keep lists of interesting articles that I come across. It saves building up piles of articles on my desk or downloading pdfs onto my 

PC. However I find it very slow and quite error-prone.

Zotero and Mendeley

Both these tools require you to download software, so they may not be practical where you have restrictive networks. And again presumably your account is linked to the PC where you have downloaded the software.

CiteULike

This looks very similar to the Connotea tool that I use in that it stores internet links and bibliographic information.

Summary

Not surprisingly the subscription tools offer the most sophisticated functionality. The University here has Refworks available to students and staff and we provide a hands-on training course to users who need more help. Unfortunately our NHS partners don’t subscribe to a reference manager product and they have quite restrictive networks. We try to provide help to these users via a list of suggested possible resources.

Thing 13 – Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox

Thing 13 is all about sharing documents, so here we are looking at Google Docs, Wikis and Dropbox.

Within the team at the health library we have a shared network drive where we store all the relevant documents, spreadsheets etc that we use on a regular basis.

Sharing online offers us a potential solution to help to support our outreach librarians who obviously work off-site for the majority of their time. This could allow us to store documents that they regularly use online where they would be more accessible.

Google Docs

Since we have just been moved into gmail for our email system the Google Drive is available via our work email addresses. I’m slightly disappointed that you need to download something and install it – it wasn’t really explained why. What happens if you are working on another computer?

I’ve uploaded a word document and pdf document. At first I was a bit confused as to whether you have to convert it to a google document but you don’t. I’ve then gone in to share one of the documents and I’m just checking whether my NHS colleagues can view it.

DropBox

This seems to offer a similar solution. Again you need to download something (isn’t this against the idea of the cloud?). However haven’t tried this yet as I’m on a hotdesk PC.

Wikis

I’ve always thought keeping a wiki seemed like a good idea. It gives you the option to create pages, share documents, members can make comments and so on. At a number of places that I’ve worked I’ve made the suggestion that this kind of tool would be useful to keep track of documents, procedures, share and so on. But for some reason my enthusiasm has always fallen on deaf ears.

Summary

In theory these look like great tools and I like the idea of having tools that easily allow me to share resources either with my colleagues or between home/work. However we already have a shared work area and it works well so I doubt that this will be replaced. We need to have a greater incentive or extra benefits in order to change. I also need to share resources with colleagues who work on quite restrictive networks and it is not clear that these tools will be accessible from there.

I’m slightly disappointed that these tools require software to be downloaded – this seems to fly in the face of the idea of the cloud.