PBWIKI TUTORIALS AVAILABLE

Atomic Learning has posted more than 40 video tutorials by Richard Marchessault which will teach you how to do everything under the sun with PBWiki. Each about 2 minutes long and are free (for now, at least). They are grouped into the following: using wikis in an educational setting, choosing and setting up a wiki, working with PBwiki, using the PBwiki plug-in features, and working with WikiStyle.

URL: http://www.atomiclearning.com/pbwiki

NEW, FREE, INTERNET TUTORIALS FOR SCI-TECH

There are three new Intute tutorials from the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol, UK. You can use them to show your customers how to search the Net effectively and to evaluate what they find.

Internet Physicist, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/physics

Internet Civil Engineer, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/civil

Internet for Petroleum and Offshore Engineering, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/petroleum

DON’T UNDERSTAND WIKIS? LEARN MORE HERE

Why Wiki? is an online video course from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee “to introduce you to the benefits and disadvantages” of wikis. There are four parts: Introduction (28 minutes), Caveats (20 minutes), Comparisons (12 minutes), and Other Wikis (20 minutes). All require high-speed Internet, and Flash (available at the site).

URL: http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/courses/wiki/

RSS TUTORIALS FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

RJason Eiseman [Computer Automation Librarian, Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, Portland, Oregon, USA] has create a RSS tutorial for law librarians. He writes, "Really the first two parts of the tutorial can be applied to anyone interested in learning more about RSS. Part 3 deals with RSS feeds for information of particular interest to law librarians, but can be applied to just about anyone as well." The tutorials require Flash, but are well worth looking at.

URL: http://www.schwabe.com/library/rss_tutorials.htm

PRACTICING MEDICAL REFERENCE

Excerpts from Practicing Medical Reference, by Mary Carmen Chimato, medlibrarian.net, 17 October 2006, URL: http://medlibrarian.net/archives/54

"As a rule, I don’t complete students’ assignments for them (neither does my colleague). I will give them all the help they need, I will even do some hand holding if necessary, but I will never take the assignment sheet, sit down at the computer and conduct the search for them. These are mainly graduate students in the health sciences - they should do their own homework and I strongly believe that they need to learn how to search the medical and health sciences literature.

"Some of our students will not work in large, university hospitals with the benefit of a medical library at their disposal. Some will work in small hospitals that only have Internet access. Some may work in an environment where they have no Internet access. I like to empower the students by showing how to effectively search PubMed. As the largest free biomedical database, this may be the only database they have access to, so learning how to get to the information they need is extremely important.

"The only times I have flat out conducted a full-on database search for someone is when a doctor has come down to the library in scrubs, (this has happened more than once or twice), or about to go into surgery and needs to find out something immediately.

"I think medical librarians remain important when they empart their skills and knowledge to others through instruction and training, not by mechanically answering question after question after question. Anyone can pretend to do that well, but by showing our patrons what we do is a skill and takes time and practice to get really good at doing, they value us more. "

HOW TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO USE THE LIBRARY

To Give the Fish or to Teach People How to Fish, by Ivan Chew, Rambling Librarian: Incidental Thoughts of a Singapore Liblogarian, 15 October 2006

I really like what Chew has to say. Here is just some of the article--you should read the whole thing!

"Do we instantly gratify to help the client get what they need or do we teach to enable them to learn how to get more.

"Increasingly we are faced with clients that want the piece of information they want and nothing else.

"We ALL live in an age of "instant gratification" and will continue to do so. Unless Internet Technology collapses, and/ or Google closes down, people will tend to want 'answers now.’

"Even if the customer knows how to fish, they will still want to find cheaper, faster and 'good enough' ways because they'd rather be doing something else.

"We still need to 'teach people how to fish,' but in order to have them want to stay and listen, we must "give them the fish".

"Most library customers these days will search for information on the Internet, and then ask friends or colleagues before they ask librarians (if they do at all). Suppose they approach librarians after that. Instead of getting direct information or answers, they get more instructions, which in their minds could be just more of the same of what they have tried to do earlier."

URL: http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/10/
to-give-fish-or-to-teach-people-how-to.html