Congrats and thanks to the Tell Tale Weekly on their new RSS feed!

I am most pleased to announce that Michael Stephens and Bob Lewandowski from the St. Joseph County Public Library will be presenting at the next SLS Tech Summit! Come see their infamous SJCPL Staff Day 2003 video if nothing else, but I guarantee you'll come away with a lot more. Oh, and we'll be taking them out for dinner afterwards if you'd like to join us.

Staff and User Technology Training

"Two technology trainers from the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, IN, will discuss how they motivate staff and library users for technology training, including Internet basics, Web searching and applications. How do we engage our learners? How do we design training that carries with them back to their desks or homes and translates to useful skills. Session will include examples and a sample training module."

Wednesday, May 19, 2004
1:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
At SLS Headquarters, Burr Ridge
Cost: Free!

"I reckon setting up aggregators for learners is way cool, in the same breath as (if not before) looking at blogging, but I'm not too sure about pre-population of those aggregators (in the same way IE et al pre-pops bookmarks) for two reasons really:

1. I should be able to select what I want... take out the choice (or hint at it) and I'll be a bit unhappy, as Jenny said it'd be a cracking job by any librarian to get together, categorise and share feeds... but already in there... no thanks!

2. It feels like that whole 'community aggregator' thing again... which works against the individuals in the group (we are our own group aggregator, perhaps?)" [incorporated subversion]

My reasoning is that aggregators already come pre-populated anyway, and most people would actually be confused if you gave them a blank aggregator. So if an aggregator is already going to have some feeds in it, let's make them relevant to get the point across right away.

In a university setting, a library can pre-populate the aggregator with topical feeds. Ditto for special libraries. In a public library setting, the aggregator could be pre-populated with local community feeds. In a school setting, the feeds could be topical or class-based. It's enough to get users started and of course in my ideal world, the aggregator includes the library's feed and a permanent link to the library's web site, online catalog, and virtual reference service (maybe even as the elusive embedded toolbar).

Works for me.