What on Earth have I been doing?

I've been doing some tidying up on my holidays. I have. And look what I found down the back of my sofa. Only my blog! So apologies for being so rubbish at updating, but here we go...

It's been a busy old time since I last wrote. The thing that has been foremost in my mind about my work is the spectre of public sector cuts. Next year could see changes to what I do. The thing I do most and seems to carry most kudos is the Internet skills training I write and deliver with my colleagues. The value of the other information services I and my colleagues supply seems only to be fully appreciated by our customers, in the most part. My point is training seems to be the way to go. And that will evolve. We'll do differently. Change emphasis. Produce eLearning packages. But there is an understanding that information literacy skills are needed.

So, I look forward to continue co-writing and co-delivering our various Internet skills packages (also available for all to see at http://sglibraryservices.wordpress.com/ generous, sharing, publicly funded types that we are). I suspect I'll be helping to do a fair bit of updating over the next few months.

Then there's newspapers. Staff in the Scottish Government buy print newspapers. Lots of newspapers. For much of the past year we seem to have been chasing various online news options as a more cost-effective alternative. But with News International and now other publishers wanting money for individual online access, and the likes of LexisNexis charging more than we can afford with our budgetary contraints, it's proving to be a real challenge. I wonder how other libraries (public libraries excepted) are providing news. Are we all just encouraging users to go on Google News? Which I see has just had a makeover, incidentally.

On a more positive note last year I spent sometime with a colleague giving our 'Alerts Centre' an overhaul. It's a one-stop-shop for Scottish Government staff offering advice on how to keep up-to-date on their subject areas. Job done. I thought 'right then, now we really must do something to encourage staff to use RSS'. RSS is something covered in our Web 2.0 Workshop and is a new, even strange concept to most course attendees. All of whom are Scottish Government or Agency staff.

I'm really pleased that the idea enjoyed alot of support from colleagues and I ran with it until I ended up building a Netvibes page to include RSS feeds by subject. Having demonstrated a draft version on 26/4 and 8/6 to colleagues, this was given the go ahead and we're now at the stage of populating the various subject tabs. Check it out if so inclined at http://www.netvibes.com/sglibraryservices.

I did come across some really good examples of organisations offering RSS feeds via Netvibes which helped alot when developing ours. Not least Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries: Team Knowledge Update. See http://www.netvibes.com/sathlibraries.

If only I can get Google Analytics to work (it did on the test tabs I had running!) I'd be a very smiley chap. I hope Analytics is just being slow at producing the first statistics.

Library: the vanguard of Internet training

There is clearly a demand for our Internet skills courses. We have 21 people on the waiting list for Internet Skills in the Workplace and 11 people on the waiting list for our Web 2.0 Workshop. To help reduce this I’ve been arranging additional sessions. This means we are almost running a course a week. And noteworthy that the Library alone is providing these courses. This obviously has resourcing implications for the Library. However, we have received very good feedback from delegates so far, and it appears we are delivering what the organisation needs. So it's all absolutely worthwhile, and right that this is what the Library should be doing.

It has also become clear that due to the speed at which the Internet changes both courses will be in perpetual Beta. I have already helped to make quite a number of revisions to course materials in light of feedback from delegates, Library staff and new resources we felt should be included. But by being aware of changes to the Internet and new tools, it will be fairly easy to keep our materials updated. Whilst this will take some resource to manage, the benefits of up-to-date course materials make this investment in effort worthwhile.

So, no surprise that since my last update I have been involved in a lot of development of Library course materials. Specifically:

Internet Skills in the Workplace
I completed co-writing the Internet Skills in the Workplace course materials and ran through the new Internet Skills in the Workplace course with the rest of the team for comments.

Web 2.0 Workshop
I completed co-writing the Web 2.0 Workshop materials. As with the Internet Skills course this includes trainers and delegates manuals, presentation, exercises and the course checklist for the trainers.

We received feedback on Web 2.0 Workshop exercises from Library colleagues, and redrafted the exercises taking comments on board. This proved to be particularly useful as the exercises provide much of the course content.

So far, I have been co-presenting all Web 2.0 Workshops. But next Wednesday all Library staff will be given training which will enable all Library trainers to deliver this course.

Web 2.0 for Policymakers
I co-wrote the course materials for Web 2.0 for Policymakers, although a colleague did most of the research on this, finding may relevant examples of Web 2.0 in Government. The course was successfully delivered on 26/11.

After further updating and tweaking, course material for the Web 2.0 Workshops and Web 2.0 for Policymakers is now complete. The resources we added to the policymakers course helps ensure the focus is on tools for Government staff. Therefore it was decided to put all the content into our Web 2.0 Workshop and run that for everyone. Trainer’s notes will help ensure we focus on resources relevant to delegates.

Corporate Induction
Having co-presented a Corporate Induction session on 29/9 it was agreed to make the Library part a bit more interactive, and we would spend a couple of minutes asking delegates what they thought the Library could do for them. Writing their ideas on a flipchart before revealing what we do via the ppt slides. This simple change does seem to work and liven up the session a bit.

SG Web 2.0 blog
I set up a test SG Web 2.0 blog (http://sgwebtrainingtest.wordpress.com/) as a place to easily make our course materials available and to encourage discussion amongst SG staff on Web 2.0. If you wish to see our current course materials, take a look. However, we are considering other options, so very likely we do this via another tool. Watch this space!

A-Z list of Library resources
I’ve also been working with our Digital Comms team to make the Library’s list of resources more accessible. Applying metadata to each resource will enable us to do much more with this potentially useful list.

Back in the thick of it...

Back from my holidays for one week now. Felt I was in the thick of it by Monday afternoon :-)

So, still helping with our hour long Discover Web 2.0 session (as she is now named). Going to run through it for the first and only time tomorrow. Course is on Wednesday! 15 attendees of a possible 30 already booked.

I've added our Oct-Mar course programme to our online booking system, so I can at last link that through to our training module on our new look homepage, meaning I can at last publish that. Good feedback so far. So, pleased about that.

And good news our corporate communications team are getting all Web 2.0. Well, they're promoting some of the more mainstream social media tools, and they've been speaking to us about these. Thus enabling us to reference that in our Web 2.0 courses. I think this will improve the content, as it'll make it much more relevant to our staff.

Still loads to do though. Especially course-wise. Thankfully I'm only helping :-)

Oh, and I need to write a short summary of the usefulness (or not) of podcasting in the workplace. My instinct tells me this is untapped training tool, aswell as being an effective way to blog.

Off to bed now. Up earlyish tomorrow. Gawd!