Health Libraries Inc Conference

On Friday October 22^nd I headed to Melbourne’s RACV Club for the 7^th Health Libraries Inc. Conference. It was great to catch up face-to-face with lots of people as I haven’t really made it to many events since I left work last time to have my first bub. Here are my notes from the day…

TROVE : Alison Delit

1 million registered users.

Thousands of volunteers.

20-30 new releases this year.

Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube search “on the side” – no control.

Should we:

Bulk upload our A-Z journals?

Share old photos on Picture Australia?

Training and Support for Remote Library Users : Jane Ryan

They use WebEx.

Cost, scalability, functionality all things to consider.

DimDim & Yumya – both free but limited.

Should we:

Citrix (which IT may implement here…)

Otherwise who do IT/GRAHnet use? If at all?

KOHA : Marion Steele & Heather Walker

Free open source LMS.

Available in multiple languages.

41 in Australia using – 33 health/medical. Includes ABS and soon to be NT Health.

Appealing features: low cost; web based; simple interface; independence from IT; support; ease/speed of implementation.

Trade offs: some of the above; bugs; authority files incorrect.

ENDNOTE : Jenny Ward

Purchased per PC – approx $500 each.

On shared network drive.

There are free reference management systems available.

Reusable Learning Objects : Sharee Crocker

RLO is information literacy by any other name ie. Electronic; multimedia etc. For instance video clips on YouTube on how to search Deakin Library Catalogue etc.

Captivate and Camtasia are the 2 products they use to “shoot” the clip.

Need Flash; Quicktime; Adobe Reader; MP4: Windows Media Player etc. also…

Library instruction with Screencast Software : Jann Small

Jing – free program. Felt Camtasia was too complex.

Screencasting – same as RLO ie. Information literacy by another means.

These are to be seen as complimentary to face-to-face, not as the main alternative.

Jing can be viewed in web browser, don’t need media players/programs.

5 minutes recording time.