by Richard Jost

I was fortunate enough to attend the “Cool Tools” workshop this July, one of the pre-AALL Annual Meeting workshops sponsored by the CS-SIS. The workshop, held at the Georgetown University Law Library, had about 25 participants from a variety of library backgrounds (technical services, public services, electronic/computing resources) mainly from academic law libraries.

The workshop was a combination of lecture and PowerPoint presentations by the speakers, followed by hands-on work at individual computer stations to practice what we had just learned. The set-up made for a very effective and practical learning experience and provided ample opportunity to get assistance from the presenters when we were trying out the new technology. The presenters had devised exercises to illustrate how the technologies could be used, and they provided examples of how these technologies were being implemented in their libraries.

The workshop focused on web 2.0 technologies, i.e., Yahoo Pipes, social networking applications, widgets, RSS feeds, which could be incorporated into almost any library website or catalog. By presenting a wide range of new technologies and real world examples of their use, everyone was able to identify what might work best for their patrons and their library.

The only drawback to the workshop was that the computer terminals we used for the workshop had different levels of security and password protections. This was difficult initially, as not everyone could actually perform the exercises being demonstrated, but these problems were quickly solved and the remainder of the day was without incident.

The most valuable part of the workshop for me was the ability to “practice” setting up these new technologies with a roomful of experts who could assist when things did not work as expected. Reading about new technologies is beneficial but actually building an application (with tutors on hand!) made it a much more valuable learning experience.