Polly Farington Workshop

This morning Lee and I attended a workshop at the Mohawk Valley Library System called Expanding Connections workshop.  It focused on helping incorporate a varitey of online tools to help better serve our library patrons.  Polly gave an overview of a variety of tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Blogspot, You Tube , Flickr, etc.  Those of us attending, were instructed to send issues we might have that we want to address to Polly so she could get an idea of what we wanted to cover.  Many librarians stated they wanted to find ways to better inform their patrons as to events and programs going on.  Polly covered some of the specific questions and then let us loose to explore new tools and she would guide whoever had questions.  Lee and I both decided to investigate Facebook since we would like to include photos and videos on our site.  We created a Library account and then downloaded movie maker. Polly encouraged using free sources if possible.  We downloaded a video we recorded yesterday at school, but chose not to post it since the video showed students and we do not have permission to show faces.    After  setting that up Lee began exploring Polldaddy since he wants to create a survey for patrons about resources they use.  We also are going to create a survey asking patrons what services such as facebook, twitter, etc. they use that we can develop to further meet their needs. 
I worked on finding out how to add a link to our library webpage, Jan Brett has a contest going and we are adding a link and asking patrons to help us get more votes to help us win an author visit.   Polly also helped me add a link that I was having trouble with to my Wiki about character education which we are going to add to the library web page as a resource for parents and school personnel. 
Polly mentioned setting up an RSS feed connecting libraries.  I will work on trying to connect all country libraries later.  She also mentioned Chimpmail for sending mass messages to patrons quickly and 4 square and Yelp as sites that people are using to keep track of where friends are.  Front Page is a free web based site many libraries are now using.  MVLS is considering updating the libraries in the system to Front Page.  
  Polly mentioned Linked in as a resource rthat many libraries are using.  Lee said he would show me how to create an account.  I already subscribe to LM-NET.  They explained Linked-in as a resource more useful in finding connections to resources.   The workshop was very informative and I felt very worthwhile attending.  Since working in the public library, I have begun to identify the many different leadership roles of the public librarian as opposed to the school library media specialist.  As the director of the library, Lee has to identify priorities and determine which tasks to designate to staff members. For some people, delegating is difficult.  I have even noticed that some of the activities that I like to do such as shelving and circulation activities, I need to allow others to do so that I can focus on activities I need to accomplish for my internship.