As libraries are increasingly asked to do more with less, we all have more things to do and less time to do them. Sometimes, the tools we have to help - like email and smartphones - actually make things worse! The trick is connecting technology and techniques that can best help us to manage our time and productivity effectively.
In this presentation, Anali will lead an intrepid party on the eternal quest of improving personal productivity. Together, we’ll fight the email dragon, vanquish the time stealing goblins, and explore an arsenal of tools that help us get things done. By sharing ideas and best practices, we can each make connections to the techniques and tools will help us succeed on our quest!
March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.
This discussion will guide you through the wild landscape of open access journal publishing, the advantages and disadvantages for libraries and authors, and give tips on sizing up the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Take a journey to discover how you can provide quality information to your patrons for free! Explore the world of Open Access Resources! Open Access refers to scholarly information that is free, online, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. This makes it easier for people to find and use reliable information on a myriad of subjects, such as health information, educational materials, or business resources. Knowledge of Open Access is important for all librarians to help us best serve our communities and stretch our dwindling budgets. Your tour guides will give an overview of Open Access, discuss legislative issues, demonstrate how to find open access resources, and explain how librarians can get involved.
Presented at the SDLA/NDLA/MPLA Tri-conference 2013