VoiceThread - Free Online Tool Brings Voices of Donors/Beneficiaries Together

Here is a free online tool that brings the voices of your donors and beneficiaries into your nonprofit's storytelling -VoiceThread

Impactix describes this tool very well in their post:
"A VoiceThread is a multimedia slideshow of photos, video, or documents that allows people to easily leave comments and join the conversation. Visually, it’s a slideshow screen surrounded by a mosaic of little avatars of all the people who comment on the image. When you click on the avatar you hear them or see what they’ve written or drawn. People can comment in five simple ways: by telephone, by computer microphone, by web cam, by writing text, or by drawing.

Wondering how you might use this free tool?
-How about getting your donors to add their voices to a story about a common cause they all support, telling why they support it?
-How about showcasing your grantees’ work by asking them to add their comments to a VoiceThread story you create about an issue they’re working on?
-How about showing how real living human beings are affected by the work you do? Ask them to add comments to a VoiceThread about how one of your programs has helped them.
-Honoring someone special? Create a VoiceThread testimonial to them including all the voice of people whose lives they’ve touched
-Trying to build a social movement? Here’s a very visual way to start—tell your VoiceThread story and ask supporters to add their supportive comments. Watch the little avatars multiply!"

Here's a great intro explaining how this all works. And a great Educator Guide that helped me. Wouldn't this be a great tool to rally support for libraries in PA right now?! I decided to throw an example out there to do just that. To see this right in VoiceThread rather than embedded, click here:

How to Stop Guest/Visitor Card Abuse

How many times have you had to get rid of one of your Guest/Visitor Patron Cards at your library because someone jotted down the barcode number to give to friends or use again, etc? If you don't want to keep creating new cards in these situations, here is an idea you might want to implement.

I share this in the Advanced Circ trainings, but thought some of you might not know about it. I first heard of Ephrata Public Library doing this, so thanks to them for a great procedure. Yes, it will take more time, but it will stop a lot of frustration:

1. First, scan all of your Guest/Visitor Cards and click on EDIT and change the INTERNET field to N for ALL of your cards.
2. When giving out a Guest/Visitor Card, scan the card, click EDIT and change the INTERNET field to Y - they can then use the public PC and CybraryN is happy :-)
3. When the Guest/Visitor Card is returned, scan the card, click EDIT and change the INTERNET field back to N - now even if the barcode was written down, if they give the barcode number to a friend or try to sneak in and use it, it won't work. Only the person who has the card in hand will be able to use that number.

For more information about the Guest/Visitor Card, check out the Circulation Manual . Click the plus sign to the left of Chapter 3 Patron Records then click on the section titled "Guest Card Creation for Use with CybraryN".

Ephrata Public Library Twitters

Thanks to Penny Talbert from Ephrata Public Library who let me know they are also twittering - yippee!! What a nice looking twitter page they have - hope you'll go follow them too @ephratapublic...

Director of Manheim Township Public Library Twitters

I found out this morning that Katrina Anderson, director of the Manheim Township Public Library, twitters when I received notification that she is now following me. So, in good form, I followed her back. Plus, see the image below to find out the cool thing they are doing for train riders in Lancaster!

So another Web2.0 breakthrough in my Library System - love it!

Rally for Public Libraries in Lancaster PA

This video was filmed during a rally for public libraries held on the steps of the Lancaster Public Library, Lancaster, PA on June 27, 2009. During July 20-25, 2009, Call Governor Rendell, your State Senators and Representatives. Urge them to Level Fund Libraries as a Priority in the State Budget.

Milanof-Schock Library Launches New Online Book Club

Way to go Milanof-Schock Library! They just recently launched a New Online Book Club using a wiki.
They also launched MSL: Your Reads... ANOTHER Wiki. Go check them out. I'm registered. Makes my heart sing :-)

Think Blogging is Just for Fun?

Look how important blogging is to the youth of Iran. Still think it's just a passing phase?...

Like Social Media, Like Musicals?

Then you'll love this video: A Web Site Story.

What Do You Geek?

From Geek the Library:

"Geek the Library is a community-based public awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries for individuals and communities, and raise awareness about the critical funding issues they face.

Whatever you GEEK, the Public Library supports it all. Public libraries inspire and empower. Everyone is welcome. Almost anything can be explored. And they play an important role for individuals and for communities."

Get your geek on here. Share your own story. Here's an example:



Note this campaign is sponsored by OCLC.

Back From Maternity Leave

Sorry for the long hiatus. I meant to post a message before leaving to deliver my second daughter, but that just didn't happen. Then, I tried to do so from home, but with a 2 year old and a newborn, well, that just didn't happen either. In fact, a lot doesn't happen anymore except total immersion in the lives of two wonderful girls and all the blessings that come with it. I will try to get back to regular blogging here as I can. In the meantime, here's a photo collage of where most of my energy goes these days :-)

Hysterical Satire on Twitter

For you twitter users (or those curious about it), here is a VERY entertaining video, the trouble with twitter:

Self Check Baby!

We are rolling out the self-check machines this week. The pilot study at Lancaster Public Library was a success. Wanted to share some photos of all of the hard work going on here at the System getting 14 stations set up - no easy task!! As you can see, John Ditmore is doing a lot of the work! Be sure to follow the project on LILLY (our intranet, requires login).

I'm a Shover & Maker!!

Check it out here. I want to express my sincere thanks to the Library Society of the World.

Conversants :-) A Participatory Conversation

This is a GREAT idea for continuing your professional development FOR FREE and without any travel! Please read Jill Hurst-Wahl's post detailing this fascinating idea. She is part of the group that is organizing this global event. Here's an intro:

"We invite you to join the movement to create and share information through worldwide coordinated conversations. Library communities and organizations are uniquely poised to employ the latest collaborative resources; the conversations that result from these collaborations hold great promise for students and practitioners across the information professions. Sharing knowledge and expertise via these collaborative conversations as part of a united effort is both beneficial and necessary, so we invite you lend your voice and join us in this unique event. Become a Conversant!
This effort is spearheaded by R. David Lankes with support from the Information Institute at Syracuse University, librarians and library students."

The post has more details and here is a video explaining the idea. I will be following this closely:


Introducing Conversants from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

Google Celebrates Spring AND Eric Carle

googleericcarlespring09, originally uploaded by Slzimm1.

Cool! Google is celebrating the first day of spring today by using a design by Eric Carle. Here's an article with more details. What a nice surprise to see this logo today (Google is my home page, of course!).

Miller Branch Library "Terror in the Stacks"

Gotta love the ingenuity and creativity of the folks at Howard County Library's Miller Branch:

Computer Hardware in Plain English

Common Craft has done it again... Love their videos. This one is "a short explanation of the basic parts of computers and what they do to make computers work. Focuses on the Hard Drive, RAM and Processor."

WebJunction's 23 Things Summit

WebJunction put on one of the best webinars I have attended yesterday. Check out their page in reference to the 23 Things Summit. They had a question and answer style dialog with those who have done staff development learning using social collaboration tools = Learning2.0. This is something I hope to do here one day, so I've been following these examples for awhile. It was nice to have a big gathering in one spot to glean even more information.

This was one of WJ's biggest webinars to date with over 200 people in attendance. The latest trend in webinars is people twittering the event at the same time using a hashtag so everyone can reference the tweets. See the tweets from this event here. There were over 25 pages full of tweets and we trended at the top of twitter for awhile. Between that and the chat log in the webinar and listening to the presenters and taking notes on our intranet wiki at the same time, by the end of 2 hours - I was exhausted. But what a great experience! Be sure to check out all of the resources on WebJunction related to this inspiring online event.

T is for Training #13 Today at 2pm EST

When: TODAY Friday February 27th is the next recording of T is for Training at 2 pm Eastern Time. Please dial or voip in and join us on the call/podcast. I am the guest host and I'm looking forward to help from all of you!

What we probably will talk about:

Ideas and implications of budget cuts on training and staff attendance at training. Are you feeling the impact yet? What challenges are you facing? What strategies do you have for learning with limited staff and a limited budget? Ideas from Lori Reed. See the great discussion on friendfeed.

This great video Marianne Lenox posted to her blog would be a great topic on why being up-to-date on the social web is so important for trainers and the world! The video is Did You Know 3.0. Here's a site with the transcription of everything in the video.

Techniques for doing/exploring everything to stay up-to-date - such as learning new tech skills, catching up on books, anything and everything. From Andrew Schuping's plea on friendfeed.

In relation to the above, do you use any online todo lists for your work? What are your favorites and what are the best ways to use them? Ex. Ta-da and Doris (Thanks to Nicole Engard for bookmarking Doris)

Along the same theme, how do you make the best use of RSS in your work? See this article on Techsoup.

How do you create brief job aids, quick references and other training documents? From point #2 in this newsletter from the Training Doctor: "Now That's a Job Aid: No doubt you are familiar with the US Air plane crashlanding into the Hudson River in New York last month. But did you know that the co-pilot only had 3,200 feet to complete a 3-page emergency landing checksheet – a job aid that is normally begun at 35,000 feet!? There’s a lesson for all of us trainers: brevity, specificity, directness. We don’t know how far the co-pilot got in his checklist, but we DO know he didn’t have time to seal the hatches on the lower part of the plane – contributing, in part, to the plane taking on water and sinking so rapidly."

Where and How? : The show’s address is here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/24719 You can listen live by clicking on the show’s page. You can call in, listen to the stream, or come by and chat. It is up to you, but please do come. If you want to participate with your voice on the call, you should probably join Talkshoe before the show. You can catch up with all of the episodes you may have missed by going to the Talkshoe either via the sidebar widget or via the web.
2point-0-ed? Keep up with us via: Our blog, Podcast Feed, ITunes Home, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, FaceBook, or Twitter.

See T is for Training blog for more details. Hope to "see" you there!

On the Next T is for Training

Please see this post on the T is for Training blog and join me as the guest host for this Friday's show. Thanks!