Meebo In Your Web Page

There's a detailed post at Michael Stephens blog, Tame The Web about putting Meebo into your library web page as a quick and easy way to offer some form of virtual reference to your patrons.

Virtual Reference Overview

There's a Virtual Reference Special Section (pp. 8 - 28) in the new issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Much of the content is directed toward large library systems, but if you are considering planning any type of virtual reference service this would be worth reading.

Study Examines Student Research Behavior

Beyond Google: How Do Students Conduct Academic Research? is a departure from the findings of some other research studies on the topic. The study used student discussion groups, content analysis, and a student survey to determine that students may not be relying as exclusively as previously thought on search engine results and Wikipedia for research in lieu of library catalogs and databases.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

This site features online teaching and learning resources from federal agencies. The link goes to a site map of their current list of resources by subject. There's an RSS feed at the top of the screen if you want to keep up with new additions to the site.

Docuticker

"Docuticker offers a hand-picked selection of resources, reports, and publications from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks, and other public interest organizations." Use the category list to find information resources, subscribe to the RSS Feed, or sign up for a weekly email that describes recent selections.

Reference Training at Guilford Tech Community College

Reference training for library staff at Guilford Tech Community College is available within a Blackboard course module. To access the materials, go to :

http://nclc.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

login as

gtcc-library
library

Click on "Reference Help Training" on the right. On the next page, click on "Handouts", "Assignments", or "Web Sites" in the green margin on the left.

Do other community colleges in NC have reference training modules or similiar materials for training paraprofessionals and technicians?

NCCCLRA Conference

Don Forbes and Michael Crumpton were nice enough to give up some time at last week's NCCCLRA Conference opening session to let me speak about the blog and generate a little publicity. Later that afternoon, I chaired a meeting in the Wake Tech library for librarians and directors interested in the blog. Among those attending: Pat Leamon (Alamance CC); Jason Setzer (Davidson CC); Allen Mosteller (Cleveland CC); Denise Bosselman (Sandhills CC); Santosh Shonek (Durham Tech); Julie Humphrey (Durham Tech); Bob Schenk (College of the Albemarle); Don Forbes (Guilford Tech), and Jenny Hock (Surry CC).
We had a good discussion on the scope of this blog and what we hope to achieve. We realize that not all NCCCLRA members are able to attend the annual conference. We also realize that most of the professional literature dealing with bibliographic instruction and reference addresses the needs of public or university research libraries. We will try to address topics of interest to the CC Librarian in the blog, and hope you will feel comfortable commenting on postings. Please don't be shy; we'll have a better "conversation" if we have plenty of members commenting on the blog. We discussed several ideas for topics, but feel free to email if you have a topic to recommend. If you do not have a Blogger account or are confused about commenting on a post, please see the July 13 post for directions. Let's get the conversation started!

Welcome to Reference & Instruction Exchange Roundtable

This is a cooperative effort to start a dialogue about Reference and Instruction in NC Community Colleges. What are you doing now, what are your instructional and reference success stories, and what are your ideas on improving instruction and reference services with the CC student population? Comments are enabled on this blog, but please stay close to the topics listed in the mission statement at the top of the screen.

We would also like to start a conversation about peer evaluation; you may also see references to this concept under "peer coaching" in the professional literature. We are interested in this concept with the emphasis on "peer", with librarian's working to improve each other as professionals, not as a part of an employee's evaluation.