My Second Computer Class

Afternoon class: 6 students.
I have a horrible cold.

Changes made since first class:

Edited Mouserobics to remove the copy/paste functions.
1st class got held up in this and was not necessary for understanding the catalog.

Made large print booklets listing the searches. This helped immensely. We didn't have to repeat the spelling of everything 10 times. (and we had one student with a hearing challenge)

Highlights: a student placed a hold. Exclaimed WOW! at just about everything we covered. Another student was happy to see where she is in the hold queue.

General feeling of empowerment.

Not anticipated: Students are so enthusiastic that they completed this class, and it wasn't difficult. Now they hunger for MORE!
When will more topics be available? When will we have a class on email? When will we have a class on the internet?

Idea: Have registration available for upcoming (unannounced) classes to give them a priority in signing up. I don't want to lose the enthusiasm, and classes are filling up so fast! Then open registration until class is full.

My First Computer Class

My first class was only half-full (three students). It was nice to start with a smaller group though. Since we had the room, we brought in one of the Ref. Desk staff members, who will later assist in future classes. Also assisting, was the Ref. Dept. Head. Beginning with the basics, the students completed Mouserobics. I had scheduled 30 minutes for this. It took almost 50 minutes. Then I had everybody surf to a website. When we announced they were on the Internet...they were amazed! We showed them the back button, which is important in our catalog interface, then took a break. Total time 1 hour. During the break, one staff member commented that he was surprised that these students didn't even know how to use a mouse when they walked in. He also had initially wondered how I was going to fill the allotted time for the classes. I handed out little certificates of completion--they were quite proud!

Class--part 2: Library Catalog. I had initially scheduled 2 hrs. for this, but we were already running 45 min. behind. (we ultimately finished on time)

Things not anticipated: 1. people not being familiar with the keyboard. Women tended to fare better, as they were more likely to have worked with a typewriter at some point. 2. people not being familiar with the spelling of (for example) an author's name. Difficult to have them try an author keyword search when they're not spelling it correctly.

Highlight of class: Patron placing her first hold!

Student evaluations were very positive. All said they would take additional classes, and that today's class was better than they expected! :)

Staff feedback: recognized some students as library regulars. Wondered how they had been finding books up until now!

Virtual Reference via IM

I just saw some new blog entries mentioning other libraries using IM to do virtual reference. Lansing Public Library does that too! We started last October. I guess it's time to broaden my publicity efforts and make sure I'm getting a shout-out from some of these other sites!

library news to come

soon, i'll be creating blogs for library news where i work. Hopefully it will be a good way to remind people of upcoming programs and announce important news between our print newsletter.

Hi

Wow! My first real blog posting! Now if only I could figure out how to set this to use a custom icon when listing in aggregators.