Special Interest Group Archive: ONLINE Tech SIG 04/22/2020

The Tech SIG met online via Zoom. Denise Garofalo convened the meeting, and these are notes.

The originals can be viewed on a shared document here.

Technology SIG April 22, 2020

Convener: Denise Garofalo, Mount Saint Mary College

 

Privacy Announcement: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis

 

• This meeting is not being recorded
• We are not using tracking software to keep track of attendees
• You are welcome to keep your camera off
• We will take notes on a shared document which we’ll keep anonymous
• We will record who logs in for our records.

Introductions

 

Struggles:

Not all students are able to get online, and people need to know where they need to get to. 

Looking at Google Classroom as a place to get to things and keep work organized. Does anyone have suggestions on where to do videos? 

• Facebook live is one place, but not everyone has an account. You have to have an account to make it, but not to view it. But to view it, you have to know the URL.
• YouTube videos are more accessible to a lot of people. 
• can you do group phone call webinars for those who are still figuring out online stuff? (I realize phone and webinar is contradictory)
• I do virtual tech time - they schedule an appointment with me and I call them.

 

We might go back eventually, but it’s good to learn these things in case there’s another round of quarantine in the future. 

 

Normally if you’re the front desk person and does technical services who receives materials, what can you do in the meantime? What other things are you doing? 

• Organizing a lot more eBooks
• Creating more LibGuides - database clean up
• Taking courses on Edx
• Cleaning up the backlog of projects that you’ve had no time to get to. 
• Cleaning up email has been a productive project. 
• Filling up the little free library, wiping down books
• Reader’s advisory, pointing patrons to resources that they might not have known before.

 

Carey Institute: The vendors of data repositories have been looking at the systems to see if they can meet different standards. What does that mean for users? Reworking the summer program from outdoor field work to working virtually with existing data sets. Everyone has to do more virtual programming, and things on the back burner, like citation managers, are becoming primary workshops. 

 

However, still see it as important for students to have the opportunity to get outside.  They provide a mixture of on demand and live videos, so students can have some flexibility. Workshops are going to be more targeted and one on one meetings.

 

Jen: One on one is easier than developing canned videos (they  have to be more a little more formal and scripted). 

 

Video editor suggestions:

• Screencastify
• Camtasia 
• Narrated powerpoints 
• AVS4U 

 

Open Access: are people adding any resources to their sites

• Several libraries have added OA resources to libguides. 
• Some include them within their catalog to make them more discoverable. 
• One library sends out a regular newsletter with resources. 

Privacy and Security: is this a concern?

Zoom -- this has been an ongoing issue. They made several changes to the system to address issues with security

 

A great webinar on using APIs was held recently, The slides are available here: 

https://people.eri.ucsb.edu/~gjanee/archive/2020/api-webinar/slides.pdf 

 

Productivity Tools:

• One of the tech services list servs recently held an online conversation about productivity . 
• Many people are getting overwhelmed with all the resources available and the work that needs to be done. 
• Some people are trying to work their normal hours while others are chunking their days to make it more manageable. 
• Others are creating old-fashioned to-do lists. 
• https://hovancik.net/stretchly/ -- free tool that can help you take a break from the computer screen. 
• http://www.fadetop.com/ -- fun break reminder tool. Helps people to remember to break up their work day. 

 

Does anyone have to deal with distance learning issues? 

 

• If we aren’t face to face in the fall, will have to step up for the fall as far as online learning is concerned. (The expectation will be that it will be more organized with the additional time.) 

People were interested in having a May meeting.