Tag: meetings

First meeting for 2013

Date: Friday, January 11, 2013
Time: 1-2 pm
Place: UAA/APU Consortium Library Room 309

If you can’t make it to the Consortium Library, we are happy and prepared to present the meeting via Elluminate Live! If you are interested in participating virtually, please send an email to kdpowell@uaa.alaska.edu to RSVP and receive the link required to join online.

Spring 2012 FLIP meetings

At the December 2011 FLIP meeting we decided which dates to meet for the Spring semester. We are still meeting on Fridays, but note that  we moved the meeting start times to 1 p.m. in hopes that this will make it easier for more people to attend.

All meetings are scheduled to take place in room 204 of the UAA/APU Consortium Library. We’ll send out a notice if we ever have to change the meeting location. Please mark your calendars:

What: FLIP meetings Spring 2012
Where: UAA/APU Consortium Library, room 204
When: 1pm – 2pm

Friday, January 20: Bring a Friend to FLIP!
Friday, February 17
Friday, March 9
Friday, April 20
Friday, May 18

As usual we welcome comments, suggestions, and feedback for fun ideas, meeting topics, and future discussions. Hope to see you at a meeting soon!

 

How do you FLIP?

For the June 10 meeting, our topic of discussion will be FLIP itself and how it is so far benefited all those involved. We feel that this is a rather unique type of group and are looking into the possibility of writing an article to submit to C&RL News for publication. But we need your input and would love for you to come to this meeting to join the conversation. Please consider the following questions and let us know your answers. If you can’t attend the meeting in person, feel free to reply in comments on this post. Your feedback is very much appreciated:

1. How has FLIP benefited you?

2. How do you think FLIP has benefited the Consortium Library?

We would like to hear multiple perspectives  – from library faculty, staff, current and past library school students, and/or folks considering library school in the future. Please let us know if and how participating in FLIP has made a difference for you.

Planning Miscellaneousness

We are trying again! At the next FLIP meeting, we will discuss the book “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder” by David Weinberger (2007). We actually tried this early in the year but the discussion meeting never came to fruition (note: don’t plan this type of thing in the weeks approaching the AkLA Conference). But we are determined to follow through because 1) it really is an interesting and relevant read and 2) the author himself actually commented on the post where our discussion of his book was first announced (you can find that here, second comment below the post).

Anyway, our new approach is to break the discussion into smaller and (hopefully easier to keep up with) portions of the book. So when we meet again (on Friday, Dec. 17), we’ll talk about the first three chapters of the book which amount to just over 60 pages.

In case you’re wondering what “Everything is Miscellaneous” is all about, here is a blurb from the Amazon.com Review: “Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place–the physical world demanded it–but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.”

Want even more information? Weinberger also maintains a blog (of the same title) that discusses the topics covered in the book. The author also has his own website, Evident, which includes his full biography.

So back to the discussion of the next FLIP meeting: the first three chapter titles are listed below to pique your interest and/or get you motivated to start reading. You have 30 days to read about 60 pages, that’s not impossible, is it??

Chapter 1: The New Order of Order
Chapter 2: Alphabetization and Its Discontents
Chapter 3: The Geography of Knowledge

Doodle

Ever try to find where your schedule overlaps with others for a meeting or group project? It can be a pain unless you use a handy dandy tool like Doodle (doodle.com)! Doodle allows anyone to create two types of polls for free without so much as signing up for an account. You can either “schedule an event” or “make a choice.” I am most familiar with the former, although the latter looks and works pretty much the same.

After assigning the poll a name, description, and administrator name, you are able to select dates from a calendar. The next screen allows you to select potential times. Click finish and voila! You have a poll. Send the link to your participants and they can select their available times quickly and easily. You can opt to receive email notices when participants respond or check back to see the results on your own.

There are additional handy features — such as comment support — and settings — limiting number of entries per person, for example. So play around with it a little. The coolest feature to note is on step 3 when creating a poll. There you will find a link to enable time zone support. You select the time zone you are in before submitting the survey. When participants come to the survey, the time zone of their IP address will be automatically filled in and the times presented will be in their local time! (Note: Participants can also manual select a time zone). No more adding or subtracting hours, figuring out what zone the poll creator is in, etc!

Neat, huh?

2009 FLIP meetings recap (so far)

Moving backward in time, here is a brief summary of the last few FLIP meetings.  It is the goal that from now on our meeting topics will carry over into this blog for further discussion, analysis, and/or general commentary.

July 21: A mid-summer meeting when attendance was low enough to promote discussion about how to increase attendance and participation in FLIP.  Possible future topics of discussion were brainstormed.  Hopefully, new ideas like this blog will help!

June 19: A discussion regarding travel to library conferences and the time/money/effort involved for both in-state and national events.

May 15: Andy Page, coordinator of the e-Learning graduate certificate program at UAA, was our “virtual” speaker.  Andy gave the group a thorough and enthusiastic overview of the program coursework – all the way from Indiana.  The relevance of integrating emerging technology tools into our education and careers was made perfectly clear with the seamless use of the online technology that made his participation possible.

April 17: Included discussions about developing project management skills and how they can be quite useful, if not actually required, for most professional library positions.

March 20: This  meeting took place the week after the Alaska Library Association’s annual meeting in Kodiak.  A few folks that got to go to Kodiak told the rest of us all about it.  In 2010, the AkLA annual meeting will be in Anchorage and we will all have the opportunity to participate AND volunteer to help make it a success.  Visit the 2010 AkLA Conference Planning Website for details.

February 20: About a dozen folks showed up for introductions and a brainstorm session on topics of interest to discuss for future meetings.