Pathfinder reflection

For my pathfinder I chose to focus on Latin American and Latino studies. Being Puerto Rican, I have a personal interest in this subject and a few months ago I created a LibGuide for the Rebecca Crown Library covering some resources for this subject. Given I had a list of all the resources and summaries of what was available in them already written down it seemed like it would be easier to create a pathfinder out of that material. When creating the pathfinder I tried looking at some of the other curation links like blendspace, educlipper, and feedly briefly but those seemed either to focused on creating actual lesson plans instead of research resources or to brief, not allowing for a proper description of a resource.

I ended up using Livebinders.com which was suggested in class last week. At first it seemed like is was too messy visually for me when we were given it as an example. It felt cluttered and a little hectic in my mind. After using it however, I feel like it was a great way to organize information. I didn't plan on having sub-tabs but after adding in some of the websites resources to the binder it seemed like the most logical thing to do. The fact that users can actually use the website within the Livebinder page was a nice feature that I think adds to how valuable this is as a tool. It was easy to change the layout of a tab, its color, and its place among the other tabs. Deleting an unnecessary tab was also simple and I didn't need to look up any instructional videos on how to use Livebinder despite this being my first experience with it. The only issue I had with it was that even after selecting an option or changing a setting the pop up window for that particular feature stays open till you close it. To me it would make sense for it to return you to the main page automatically after you click on an option. Livebinders will be added to my professional toolkit in the future. It will be great when creating pathfinders for patrons and fellow staff members alike.

Click here to open this binder in a new window.

Digital Storytelling Reflection

The most enjoyable part of this process was the interaction with my group members while creating it. We had a lot of fun locating images to put into the movie, deciding on a script, and convincing each other to try and perform the role. We laughed a great deal and it did not feel like we were doing actual work. The most difficult parts were technical issues (not being able to find the record button or separating audio) and we usually had to seek out help to resolve these issues. Even though the three of us had a little experience with iMovie, we still had to learn new things to be able to create our project. We even learned how to record audio in garage band and import it into iMovie prior to learning the shortcut to make the audio record button visible. 

This project would be great when trying to promote library evens or services to the community. We could make the video and have it published to the library page, email the link out to subscribing members of our newsletter, and try to have teachers play the videos for students/parents during orientations or weekly announcements. This project provides a great opportunity to teach kids not only how to produce media content but also what they are allowed to put within their content and how copyright laws work. They can have fun making the videos but also learn how to locate images, music, and other material that are licensed under creative commons. Within the library this medium can also be used to create book reviews that might help promote reading among other students.


 

Creating a Book Trailer

The book I chose to use for the book trailer was Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper. The book itself details all the terrible traits a person may have based upon their zodiac sign. The goal of my trailer was to shock and amuse the audience by using positive and negative comparisons for a sign while also having a cool picture representing the sign. Doing this in Animoto was both simple and fun. The music available seemed like a good fit for a zodiac book; the spiderweb theme added a bit of the dark feel I wanted for the audience. They get to discover their dark side if they read the book so a dark theme and music go great. While at first it was difficult to get the text character limit down, after the first couple pictures were added in this became easy. The preview option for the video was much appreciated as well. I will be adding Animoto to my professional toolkit for later use.

The other site I decided to try was Masher.com because I enjoyed the title to be honest. While it was easy enough to add content the options for themes were very limiting and even though there was a link to check for masher music to use in the video for free I could not actually get any music to come up. I found free music through the creative commons website and deliberately picked a 30 second clip to hopefully keep the video short but the video was 2 minutes instead. There was no way I could locate to limit the time an image was on screen or the length of the entire video. Also you are not able to add captions to the pictures which I disliked. There was no option for previewing the video before it was created either; another negative in my view. It also turned the image of the book cover from its original vertical position and wouldn't let me change it back. This was just frustrating. I don't think I will ever use this to make a book trailer again because it feels like a less functional PowerPoint slide show. This tool will not be going in my professional toolkit either.

 

Making a Promotional Poster

While developing the flyers I was focused on creating something that would be eye catching for college students. For the Smore flyer, it only took me about 30 minutes to create a product that I felt would catch someone's eye and also communicate all the necessary information readers needed to understand what events there would be and when they would happen. The ability to add in a video was another plus since I feel people would be attracted to it. Were I doing this for an actual event I would make a video about banned book week and keep it short, about 30 seconds to a minute instead of the library tour video. The layout creates a good contrast between the text and background. The divided parts come together nicely as a whole piece. In the future I think I will be using Smore when trying to create nice flyers. 

I decided to use Microsoft Publisher for the PDF flyer I needed to make and still feel frustrated with the design. I changed the color scheme between the text and background multiple times to try and have a good contrast. I didn't want an image hard to see from far away or that would clutter the poster so I used a transparent simple one and then added some shapes on it to create a banned book image. Prior to settling on this I did go through multiple images and all just seemed to clutter the poster instead of adding to the design. The text was something else I had an issue with; there is less on the PDF poster but it still feels like to much to me. I tried to use horizontal and vertical lines to draw the eye of the viewer. I also tried to use alignments to make it look a bit more interesting. In the end I feel what I came up with would be acceptable at least. 

The two flyers: 

Subscription Database Brochure Reflection

When deciding what database to use when making this brochure I tried to pick the one most used at my current place of work and it overwhelmingly seemed like Academic Search Complete (ASC) was used the most. Dominican University offers a large number of databases for patrons but when a student comes to me seeking assistance with research I usually find myself teaching him/her how to perform a database search through ASC since it is listed on the library home page. Also when considering my audience I felt the brochure would be focused on freshman or beginning University students that may not be aware of how to find helpful research. It is these students that I usually walk through accessing the database. Then I teach them how to use Boolean statements to find the results they need without having one long statement that is to specific for tangible results. 

I chose to use a trifold pamphlet with the idea that it can be given out during freshman orientation to students. This way when they need to start researching for classes they have an idea of how to use the database, that it has articles, some of the broad subject areas it has information for, and that they can come to the library for more help. I also tried to include information about our web reference and online tutorials for students that may be unable to come to the library or uncomfortable with coming to us for help. I do realize that my brochure is somewhat text heavy and this was deliberate. When putting in screen shots for the databases I found that the image was getting to distorted because it needed to be re-sized to fit the thin column width. A bad image seemed less useful then some text about what to do.This pamphlet can serve as another outreach tool for the library to get information about our available resources out there to our students. It also serves our patrons as a beginner guide to our most popular database. 

Equipment investigation reflection

This was my first time actually using Prezi in a project; prior to this I have seen other's use it but my expertise in Microsoft PowerPoint has always led me to use that instead. I felt that the Prezi was less of a collaborative experience than the Google Doc we used for the makerspace inventory. Since Latrece and myself were unfamiliar with Prezi but Sean had experience we had Sean create and setup the Prezi we had. From there we were able to put in information from our makerspace inventory and then expand upon it in the Prezi. We talked about the content to add to the Prezi and then Sean carried out the major changes we wanted to see. 

Prezi seemed easy to use; I did not need to look up any kind of tutorials on how to make changes or add new slides to it. Latrece had some issues when trying to make small changes to some of the text on the slides and because of this her and I looked for edits that needed to be made together. After locating them I would then make the changes since I was able to just double click on the text and edit it. After everything we put into the makerspace inventory it only took a few hours to get everything into the Prezi and have the final version done. It seemed fairly easy to me. Sean and Latrece are easily the best people I've ever worked on a project with; their enthusiasm, easy manner, expertise, and interest in new things made this project fun while removing all the stress I normally feel going into group projects. They are great people to explore something new with. 

The design options in Prezi are much more attractive than those available in PowerPoint. It also moves more smoothly visually resulting in a more engaging presentation I think than PowerPoint. In the future I believe I will use Prezi when creating presentations that are meant to be engaging to the audience. This could be in a class intended to teach patrons something or when presenting something to young people that will be bored by a PowerPoint. However, if I am giving presentations to a board of directors or similar group I believe I will use a PowerPoint because its simplicity gives it a professional feel. Prezi seems just as useful as other presentation mediums like Google Presentation and PowerPoint; to me it is just a slightly different tool for different audiences.  

Makerspace Inventory Reflection

When constructing the Makerspace inventory we started out by discussing what could potentially go into the makerspace we would create and who the space would be for. Since Sean and Latrece both work in public libraries we decided to focus on a public library environment and devoted the new makerspace to children ranging from toddlers to older school children. From here Sean brought up interest in having the capability to build robots with the children and I brought up having a Lego wall so that toddlers would have somewhere to build and show off their creations. After we had a general idea we started building an actual inventory of what to include and I created a Google Document for all of our information and plans. 

Having worked with Google Docs before it was easy for me to set up the document, share it with my group members, and then add in a table to organize our inventory. I explored a new feature of Google Docs by using the drawing function to create a diagram of what the makerspace would look like in our new library. We based it off of the way the children's section and preexisting makerspace is organized in the library Latrece works at. I was somewhat disappointed that I could not use formulas in the table in Google Docs to add the cost of all our items together automatically. Everything had to be added together in a separate excel sheet and then one of us would just change the total cost in the Google Doc as we added more items to our inventory. I was able to add in new rows to our table as Latrece and Sean found more items we could include; Latrece was having some difficulty in adding a row and I am unsure how to do this on a Mac computer. This removed some of the technical difficulty that would have come up if she had to do this alone or if we simply divided the project into parts and worked separately. 

Google Docs and the other office like functions they have like slide show and spreadsheets is already a part of my professional tool kit and will continue to be a part of it. All of us being able to work on the document together and separately was immensely useful. It saved us a number of emails and revisions were we to have used a word document or just a long email. Another thing we did that I will need to start using in future group work was use a conference call to be able to work on the project together without actually being together. I'm not a big fan of talking on the phone and am usually quick to pick a video chat over a call. This worked out perfectly for our group; we worked on the project together online and spoke on the phone without anyone losing contact because of a bad internet connection or misunderstandings in what was said due to choppy quality.