Library Deans and Directors Meeting, California Community Colleges

To hear the presentations of the CCL Deans and Directors meeting, go to:
http://tinyurl.com/3b6t7c

Last year, there were times when I wondered if I had the energy to carry me the next 5-6 years until my retirement. I felt exhausted and drained from my own professional life. I felt overwhelmed by all the new Web 2.0 initiatives in the social networking environment and also felt like I was left behind in the lightspeed movement of new technologies. I decided to take advantage of my college's professional leave which is parallel to a sabbatical leave.

My goal was to step back from administrative responsbilities to look forward to "new agendas, new methods of serving students in the digital arena, a chance to play with new technologies and plan for the digitization of PCC's resources for our college community, for greater access, and for posterity. And, since I was looking at these initiatives for my own college, I decided to look at what we were all doing in the state as well.

I began with a blog. What an incredible way to track my comings and goings, my diverse activities and thoughts and ideas. With my blogger account in hand, I was on my way. I chose three major areas for my year of study:

1. Attend conferences and workshops relating to this agenda especially those sponsored by the OCLC Digital and Preservation Resources Center.
Take online classes and online workshops to enhance my knowledge {OCLC, SIRSI seminars, @One and Infopeople classes)

2. Explore using Contentdm for PCC's digital objects.
Library unit plans since 2001 have indicated the need to fully explore the wide range of information resources on campus and integrate them into a single access path. The Library is positioned to take a leadership role in this integration.
Preliminary focus will be on consolidating and extending access to existing archival as well as departmental resources (art slides collections, digital music collections, photograph collections including the Courier archives and back files, application software, and historical archives.

3. California Community Colleges and the digital arena
Since I have been Assistant Dean, Library Services, I have taken an active role in statewide agendas. I lead the way and managed the cooperative purchasing effort with the Community College League and the CSU. I formulated the framework for funding a minimal core collection of library resources for each college library through TTIP.
Now, as I consider where PCC needs to go to move forward in the digital arena, I will also survey and assess the status of other community colleges in the state.

It has been an incredible year and if I had to pick three activities that changed my perceptions, it would have to be blogging, a website called 43 things, and the online seminars done by Sirsi (not a commercial from a customer---we are Endeavor-Voyager customers!)

1)You too can blog, it is easy and fun AND you can track your progress.

2) Secondly, take the time to listen to Stephen Abrams online seminar at http://sirsidynixinstitute.com/archive.php Get ready for the roller coaster ride that Stephen Abrams takes you on: 25 technolgies in 50 minutes. Jot down those that appeal to you and then go to the website 43things.com. This website helps you capture all those things you want to do at some time and place in you life.

3. More than anything, schedule the time to play: just once a week, but every week. Take the opportunity to jump into the water and see what social networking is about. Lastly, let's meet them out there where they live and breathe, It is exhiliarating!

RSS--Wikis--blogs--photoblogs (Flickr)--Tags--YouTube--MP3--Streaming media--Google office--Instant messaging--Meebo Trilliam and GAIM--visualization--Second Life--avatars--Retrievr--Podcasts--MySpace--Facebook--Skype--Library thing--Endeca--Virtual Reference--Folksonomies and TagClouds--Blinkx and Singingfish--and more...