I joined LinkedIn a few months ago at the invitation of a colleague. My first thought was, “Can I really manage another social networking site?” But I have been pleasantly surprised by LinkedIn. It seems to be geared to those looking for a job or making business contacts.

I’ve connected with a few librarians who I have never met (not in person anyway) like A-list blogging librarian Sarah Houghton-Jan. I’ve even been contacted by a few friends of friends who are applying for jobs at PLCMC.

Once you set up your profile and make some connections, it’s interesting to see how close we are all connected. Remember the six degrees of separation? LinkedIn works a little like that.

For instance Sarah is listed as a 1st level connection for me. I can browse her connections and see that she is connected to Stephen Abram. So now Abram is listed as a 2nd level connection for me through Sarah.

My favorite part of LinkedIn is the Q&A. You can throw a question out there about anything and get some really good responses from people all around the world in all different professions. Answers are ranked by the person who asked the question. Each question has a “best answer” selected.

I have selected the areas that interest me and subscribed to them via RSS feeds. I mostly just read the responses to questions that interest me, but occasionally a questions gets put out there that I can’t resist answering. It must be my inner-librarian! I made it a mini-goal for 2008 to have at least one answer selected as a best answer.

I was surprised to log in yesterday and see that I scored two best answers this week! One in the area of Occupational Training and one in the area of Professional Networking…and the year is only 1/12th of the way over!

So my question to you is, do you use LinkedIn and how do you use it?

After months of problems with my domain host I decided it was time to move. Luckily I found a great new host (literally just down the street) who is not only hosting my site but is also helping me out with some much needed tech support. I would promise to give him my first born child but I think he has his hands full with the two he has already!

I also decided it was time for a new look too. If you subscribe through an RSS feed please be sure to click through to take a look at the new site. Let me know what you think!

p.s. Thank you Devin, Ian, Tony, and Sarah!

Earlier this week Tom and I delivered our first synchronous training to staff at PLCMC. We delivered three Learn to Learn Online* sessions and had about 10 participants in each session. The sessions were great. We only had one major technical problem and luckily that was on our side not the participants side.

Ironically this week Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project Blog delivered her first webinar. She wrote a great post, 9 Lessons I Learned From Running My First Webinar. Inspired by Michele’s post, I’ll share what I learned this week about delivering synchronous training.

1. Plan, develop, practice, then plan some more. Anyone who has delivered or for that matter taken online training will tell you it is more work than a face to face class. A lot more work! Give yourself plenty of time to plan and develop the training. Then try it out. Then revise it.
2. Don’t try to wing it. I can’t tell you how many face to face sessions I’ve had to teach with little or no time to prepare. The very first computer class I ever taught was on Microsoft Project and I’d never used Project before. Though it’s not a good idea, you can pull it off in a face to face class. But in a live, online class forget it! Why? Keep reading.
3. Silence is not golden! Silence will kill you in a synchronous environment. The minute you stop speaking without warning the participants will think they’ve lost their connection and confusion will begin. If you are starting a brainstorming activity, let the participants know by saying, “You have 30 seconds to _____ during that time you will hear silence. I will let you know when there are 5 seconds left.”
4. Script or notes? Know your style. Because you don’t want any silence, you need to have a script at least when you start rehearsing. Tom and I practiced a few times with a script then by the time we had our first class I was down to just a copy of the slides, an outline, and some key phrases I wanted to say. Some people, like Tom, are great with a script but when I use one it is painfully obvious that I am reading. I do better with just a few notes.
5. Have a producer. This is actually one of the most important lessons. Since we are going to be offering at least 60 LTLO sessions, I thought I could do some of them by myself. Tom and I quickly discovered why it is so important to have a producer. You want an active class. You want lots of participation. In order to keep that pace going, you need two people. One person just cannot talk continuously, annotate slides, and monitor and respond to chat. Additionally in our last session, Tom ran into a technical difficulty with his microphone. Had I not been there to back him up, the class may have come to a halt only 10 minutes in.
6. Record the session. I hate the way I sound on recordings! But I was able to pick up a few things after the first session and improve them for the subsequent sessions. For one, all that talking makes you want to talk fast. Don’t! Remember to breathe.
7. Let participants know up front who is monitoring chat. I noticed after watching the recordings that a few people were sending me private chat messages. I was not able to facilitate and monitor chat so some of the chat questions went unanswered or recognized by me.
8. No one knows when you make a mistake, so don’t call attention to it. This is true for face to face and online training. If you click on the wrong slide and it’s not glaringly obvious, just roll with it. The participants don’t know. Your presentation will seem more polished if you let the little mistakes go.
9. Each facilitator/producer needs to have two computers logged in to the live classroom. One computer needs to be logged in as the instructor and one needs to be logged in as a participant. You need to see exactly what your participants see. This is especially helpful if you are using application sharing. Additionally if you have technical problems on the instructor PC you can quickly grab the headphones and move over to the participant PC. This happened to both Tom and I during separate sessions.
10. Have fun! Yes it is a totally different experience to deliver live, online training. I was incredibly nervous before the very first session on Wednesday morning. But once we got going I started to have fun and forgot about how nervous I was. In fact once we really got going it was all about the learning and I didn’t even think about the two computer screens in front of me.

That is the goal with live, online training. It’s about the people and the learning and not the technology. I have to give credit here to Jennifer Hoffman and Kassy LaBorie at InSync Training. If you are still unsure about online training, take a free course from InSync. Once you experience synchronous training done right, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to jump in.

*These sessions were adapted from the Learn How to Learn Online sessions developed and offered by InSync Training.

Ever wondered what a site looked like way back…say 5 or 10 years ago?

Take a look at a snapshot of your favorite site via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. If your site is not archived you can submit it for archival, or you if your site is archived and you’d rather it not be you can request to have it removed.

Here’s a bit of info from the site:

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections.

How cool is that! The really great thing about this is anyone can submit digital information for archiving. It doesn’t matter how well you sing, write, draw or anything else. Just create an account and start uploading files or linking to your site.

If you are a geek like me be sure to check out the hardware page that shows pictures of and explains how all this data, 2 petabytes, is stored. By the way, if you wanted to back up all that data you’d need close to 3 million CD-Rs!

Take a look at Michael Stephen’s Tame the Web in 2000 and in 2008.

Wow, we’ve come a long way!

Now take a look at AOL in 1996 and 2008. What’s really funny is the little box on AOL that says, “the future–personal chat.”

What do you think these sites will look like in another 10 years?

1-866-WEB-4111

If you are away from your computer and need a question answered here’s a service that will do it for you. The company is Look Up Web for Me. It’s a toll free call and a free service. You name the question and they look up the answer.

I decided to test the service out. I called and was put on hold while a “Search Maestro” was located for me. By the way Search Maestros get paid $10-15 per hour and work from home! I was on hold for a few seconds then Jen answered my call. Pleasant and easy to understand Jen was willing to look up pretty much anything I asked. When I first read about the service through a question posed by founder Altaf Boghani on LinkedIn, I was a little suspicious. It sounds too good to be true. Right now the service is privately funded and I wonder how they will generate income in the future. Maybe it will be via phone ads as Google 411 plans to.

In all it’s a great idea. I can’t tell you how many times I have called home, a friend, or even the library to have someone do a quick Internet search for me, and that’s exactly where the idea for this business came from. According to a Jan. 11, 2008 press release, Boghani researched and found that people call family and friends to look up a wide range of information on the Web.

The most frequent categories were directions, store hours and locations, train times, traffic jams, weather, address confirmation, hotels, flight information, phone info from an organization’s web page, and doctor’s number from an HMO Web site.

Heck, my mom called me tonight to ask how many calories are in a potato!

I’m curious to see how librarians view this service? Do we have some competition? Or is this just another great resource? I’m also curious to know why people, my mom included, don’t call their libraries for information like this.

A few years ago I was overwhelmed with too much to do and not enough time. Sound familiar? I tried everything–just about every paper planner and organization software out there. Then as I was prepping for a Microsoft Outlook class, I came across the book Take Back Your Life: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized. That book changed my life!

It’s based on the principles of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but you don’t have to have read GTD first. Take Back Your Life tells you specifically how to apply Allen’s time management system using the features available in Outlook.

I have to say it took some getting used to. In the past I’ve managed my life by email. You know what I mean. I was even at the point of emailing myself things that I didn’t want to forget! I had everything in my Inbox from staff requests for training to my user name and password for Yahoo training accounts.

It took some time to actually implement the new system, but it was time well spent. My home and work life feel more organized and efficient.

So now I’ll share with you, my top 10 tips for getting organized.

1. Don’t use your Inbox as a task list. What’s the golden rule of handling snail mail? Handle it once. Toss it, act on it, or file it. Email is no different. I started setting aside some time each morning and each afternoon to process email. When I read a message I immediately reply, delete, or file (and it rarely needs to be filed). I never let messages stew in my Inbox. It just takes too much time to go through them repeatedly. Any emails that need action become a task on my task list.
2. Schedule time each day or each week for your system. Use this time to plan the next week, file, straighten up your desk, etc.
3. Use the same time management system for home and work. It just takes too much time and effort to have two separate systems. Plus these days there is just too much overlap between home and work.
4. Keep a list of quick tasks. We spend a lot of time waiting. Waiting in line at a drive through, waiting in a doctor’s office, waiting on hold on the phone. Have a list of some tasks that you can do quickly during these times. Take this time to catch up on reading journal articles, make a phone call, enter information from business cards into your address book.
5. Stop multitasking! I was once the self-proclaimed queen of multi-tasking, but once I stopped I found that the quality of my work improved. Obviously there are times when we have no choice but to multi-task. But when you have the opportunity to give one project your full attention, you’ll be amazed at what you can get done.
6. Reclaim your life from email. Do you really need to be notified every time you’ve got mail? Turn off all the bells and whistles and stop getting distracted every time you receive an email. A study cited in Time Magazine evaluated the work habits of 1,000 office workers. The study found that interruptions take up about 2.1 hours or 28% of the average work day. Imagine what you could do with that extra time. If you are really bold, try organizing email-free Fridays.
7. Weed! The principles of weeding books apply to other areas of your life too. Choose what you really love and enjoy and focus on those things. Pareto’s 80/20 rule applies to just about everything. 80% of the time we read 20% of our RSS feeds. 80% of the time we wear 20% of the clothes from our closets.
8. Cut the clutter! This goes hand in hand with weeding. How much time do you spend looking for lost or misplaced keys, wallets, or other items? Keep only what’s absolutely necessary or what you love and let go of the rest.
9. Find a safe, secure solution for keeping up with accounts and passwords. It’s not safe to write them down or keep them in an Excel spreadsheet. I use eWallet and have found it to be a huge time-saver and well worth the $20-30 investment. It synchronizes with my PDA so I always have this important information with me.
10. Stick with it. It takes time to develop new habits. If you fall off the organization wagon, hop right back on.

Do you have an organization or time management tip to share, please post it in the comments.

p.s. Great minds think alike. Shortly after posting this I got around to reading my RSS feeds and saw that Karen over at Library Web Chic is now a GTD fan as well. She’s post links to some great web-based time management tools too.

When you are in a family with two working parents it is so hard to have a sick child. For those of you who have yet to experience parenthood or daycare let me fill you in. There are stringent state regulations on when your child cannot attend childcare. Then generally your child has to be well for at least 24 hours before going back. So not only are you stuck home with a sick child, but you are stuck home an extra day after your child is well. Then, just to rub a little salt on the wound, a few days later you usually catch whatever your child had. My first child caught every virus that went around during the first two years of his life. Right before his second birthday he contracted salmonella and was quarantined for three months! Those first two years were hell! But children have to go through this at some point to build up their immune systems. If not when they’re babies it will be in kindergarten.

Now my son is almost four and he has the immune system of an elephant. He rarely ever gets sick.My daughter has done fairly well so far. She’s been in daycare for three months and today was only the second time she’s been sick.

As a trainer it is especially hard when you have a sick child. Classes have been scheduled months in advance. Facilities have been reserved. Other people’s lives have been arranged around your class schedule. Canceling a class at the last minute is a last resort.

Here are some options for dealing with family illnesses when you are a working parent:

• Check in your area for special childcare centers that accept sick children. It’s expensive, but there are times when it’s worth it.
• Create a support network of family and friends who might be able to help out in a pinch.
• Find another coworker in your library who has children and arrange a system for emergency swaps. Since our library system is open 7 days a week I have friends who have days off during the week that I could call on for help.
• Join or create a network with other parents. The Mommies Network has chapters across the US. It’s an online support group for moms. Members from my local group Charlotte Mommies have helped me with everything from fixing a broken toilet to bringing my family meals after Cameron was born.
• If it’s the height of cold and flu season and your baby is prone to being sick, plan ahead and have a back up trainer lined up.
• Be a detail-oriented planner. My husband is also a trainer, so when possible we try not to both teach at the same time. That way usually one of us has an easier schedule to clear.

Today I was scheduled to attend training. Since it was online there was no problem. I signed in from home and Cam and I enjoyed the session together. Yet another reason to love online training!

WebJunction broke a record earlier this week with over 200 people attending the 10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008 webinar. If you missed Ed Rossman’s presentation you can view the archive here.

To recap, here are the 10 things:

1. Use technology
2. Train, train, train
3. Polish your comportment
4. Reduce clutter
5. Handle noise
6. Handle conflict
7. Have a plan
8. Develop partnerships
9. Create great programs
10. Build camaraderie

All of these are great tips! I especially like #2.

I’m adding a new series to Library Trainer, Trainer’s Toolbox. Trainer’s Toolbox will feature activities that you can incorporate into training sessions.

Here’s a simple activity that you can do to get more participation from a group. Best of all it costs nothing!

I saw this activity done very well tonight at my local ASTD chapter meeting. The speaker began by stating that he would be giving out gifts during the session. The premise was simple. Ask a question or contribute to the discussion and you receive a gift. During the session you can keep the gift, pass it on, or share it with everyone. After the first person receives the first gift and unfolds this mysterious piece of paper everyone else wants to know what it is so they start contributing to the discussion. By the time all the gifts are passed out, the participants are so engaged in the discussion they forget about the gifts.

Since I said this activity costs nothing you’re probably wondering what the gifts are. The gifts were cleverly folded pieces of paper that had motivational quotes on them. So you get an additional chance for audience contribution when someone speaks up to share a quote with everyone. It’s interesting to see how people will make the quotes apply to their lives. It’s kind of like reading a horoscope–when it’s generic enough it will fit.

I ended up with three gifts tonight (I’m an ENFJ after all–heavy emphasis on the E). I’ll share them now with you.

For knowledge itself is power. -Francis Bacon

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. -Thomas Stearns Eliot (widely attributed to Emerson, possibly anonymous)

Summary

Time Needed to Prepare: 30 minutes

Cost: None

Materials Needed: Quotes that apply to the training session, paper, creative paper folding technique

Instructions:

1. Print each quote on a separate sheet of paper.
2. Fold into a creative design - paper hat, paper boat, origami.
3. At the beginning of session say, “I’m going to be giving out x number of gifts today. You can keep the gifts, pass them on, or share them with the group at any time.” The less you say the better. You want them to wonder what the gifts are.
4. During the session hand out a gift each time someone participates or adds to the discussion.
5. At the end of the session bring the exercise to a close by by asking, “What gift have you received today?” There is no right or wrong answer.

Tom and I are presenting a pilot Learn to Learn Online class next Wednesday, January 23 from 10-11:30am EST. The session is one hour with 30 minutes tacked on at the end for feedback. The objective is to introduce staff to the synchronous learning environment. Eventually this will be required for any staff who take online classes. The session will be held online using Horizon Wimba. All you need is a computer with high speed Internet access. You can access the audio portion via VoIP or a landline (although the landline number is long distance).

We have several staff members attending but I’d like to have some input from other trainers or really anyone out in libraryland who feels he or she could contribute some constructive feedback.

Email me at lreed “at” plcmc.org if you are available and interested. Happy learning!