CMCIG Workshop: Ready to go

I know, the business card looks suspiciously familiar. This is not another post about an AU LibGuides presentation, though in a way it could be. Finishing touches on Friday's CMCIG Spring Workshop presentation Realigning Teacher Education were made yesterday. As with the ACRL poster session, some kind of token handout with our presentation URL and contact information is necessary. I have IRC pens for each attendee, so creating a card and attaching it to the pen seemed a quick and easy solution.


Why does it look like a LibGuide? After Deanna mentioned her strong aversion to PowerPoint, the presentation tool we selected was ... LibGuides. As co-editors we were able to work independently and collaboratively, thus using a web 2.0 tool, to discuss web 2.0 technologies. The presentation is a timely addition to our growing LibGuides arsenal and includes education, library, and technology resources for interested patrons.

For the first time I incorporated an RSS feed into a LibGuide, though I am a bit frustrated by only being able to use one proxy address. I wanted to create an Ebsco database alert about RSS feeds to demonstrate how users can keep track of desired search strategies and to present articles about using RSS feeds in education. The feed was easy to create and adding the AU proxy for off-campus database access took only a click of the mouse; not being able to use an OhioLINK proxy (allowing OhioLINK members to view the feed) was problematic. I had to settle for advising attendees the alerts would not work off-campus for non-AU users. All of the additional resources will be accessible with OhioLINK authentication.

I'm always learning something new when creating a LibGuide, this time was no different. I discovered you can manipulate the size of a tab. Our presentation includes twelve tabs displayed in two rows. To make the tabs fit on the page, I added html coding for a space (nbsp;) behind different titles and was able to finagle how they displayed. Since we have had luck adding that same code into a box title, it was worth trying.

As to the presentation guide, Deanna mentioned we have over three hours of information to present during a forty-five minute session. We are meeting via yahoo IM later this week to finalize - and tweak - the guide and plan.