Oconee County Public Library Staff Development Day

Yesterday I did a presentation at the Oconee County Public Library staff development day. I've been working through this presentation and think I finally have it they way i want it! :-) However, technology problems were crazy! Their county library operates in a very unique way - the county administration manages all of the library's IT. Needless to say, the Internet was down, an IT guy had to give me a small wifi thingie to give me internet access which was VERY slow. ..AND I was going to be showing YouTube and Vimeo videos. I ended up having to skip the IDEO video on The Future of the Book because of the internet speed but it can be found in the presentation below. I also was using one of their laptops that was so locked down that i couldn't even show youtube videos on full screen mode nor could I show my slideshare presentation on full screen and instead had to download it to that laptop just to get it on full screen... frustrating to say the least...

The library really needs to manage its OWN IT so that they can have control over what they do. They need to be able to hire their own IT person so they can do the things they want to and move forward on many different social media outlets. They really want to be able to do more with Twitter, YouTube, and other things. They have some great ideas for posting training videos, etc. However, because they cannot control their own IT, they are behind the curve. They really want to be able to do more but just can't and I could tell there is a lot of frustration among the staff about it...

We had a great brainstorming session after the presentaiton. Each group talked about what they want to be able to do with technology and social media.



Here are the high points of the brainstorming session:

• using YouTube to promote library services and provide training tutorials
• have multiple twitter accounts to communicate with patrons
• get more people involved with social media
• have a listserv or get a Constant Contact email marketing account
• use Flickr to post historical images
• have more control over the library's web presence
• have a manly book club for guys
• do a virtual book club
• create a blog that lists new library materials
• issues various types of press releases
• offer patrons the ability to sign up for a library card online
• use business cards to promote services
• and my favorite: find 5 things to stop doing that no longer work

Here is the presentation:

social media is changing libraries - how do you fit in?

View more presentations from Curtis Rogers.

THANK YOU again to the staff of the Oconee County Public Library for being so hospitable and for really putting a lot of thought into your brainstorming session!