Week 9: Workshops and an Intro to Webinars

Last week’s class gave us the opportunity to discuss HCOD & librarian ethics as well as learn more about the logistics for the one-shot workshops that we will be presenting in class tomorrow. A few of the important points I took away from the lesson on workshops: stress why the workshop is taking place (having a clear motive helps participants engage more with the learning process); try to get to know participants through scenarios and discussion questions; and try to relate what is being taught in the workshop to knowledge the participants may already possess (transferability, prior knowledge, etc.). Additionally, I think including an icebreaker in this activity will be beneficial. My group did not have an icebreaker for the book club, and I feel this omission really affected the overall trajectory of our discussion. Hopefully, tomorrow’s activity will be an opportunity to put what we learned by doing the book club exercise into practice (formative assessment!).

We also had the opportunity to hear a webinar given by Bobbi Newman (aka Librarian by Day) who spoke more about the controversial new HarperCollins/OverDrive’s eBook policy. The webinar, as someone pointed out in class, really was a great opportunity to (1) hear from and talk to a professional librarian about her opinions on a relevant library issue; and (2) observe a real-life webinar! Being a novice to the field of webinars, I was a tad disappointed that the webinar did not include a screen showing the speaker of the presentation (although I think this may have been an option…?). At the same time, the lack of visual stimulation did make me focus that much more on the audio component of the webinar. I also feel my own experience with the audio/visual aspects of the talk will be useful when it comes time to create my own webinar.

Because we have no readings for this week, I will talk briefly about my one-shot workshop for tomorrow. Our group is presenting on the subject of collection bias within libraries. We are interested in exploring how librarians can best serve their patrons by creating diverse, representative collections that adhere to their patron base. In terms of the workshop itself, I am most concerned about the time limit and effectively fitting what we want to say into the 20 minutes. I am also hopeful that the activities and talking points we have planned will be appropriate for our subject and we can all learn something together!