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Five Weeks to a Social Library: Participant Application

By Meredith Farkas | October 2, 2006

I’m so pleased and excited to see how Five Weeks to a Social Library is shaping up! We have a terrific group of presenters involved in the course who will help to teach participants all about social software and how to successfully implement social technologies in their library. You can see a very preliminary preliminary program on our Drupal site. And just reminder: even if you’re not a participant in the course, you will be able to access all of this content. The live Webcasts will be archived for later viewing by everyone and all of the screencasts and podcasts will be freely available on the Web. Yippee!

We are now accepting applications from those who are interested in participating in the course. We are most interested in reaching those who have the least opportunity to access to this sort of education and the greatest potential to benefit from this and benefit their library and patrons. You can see the full participant application on our site, but I pasted it below as well. I hope some of you will consider applying or will promote this opportunity on your local and state/provincial library associations’ electronic mailing lists. I think a lot of people who can’t participate nationally often join their state library organization and these are the people we really want to reach.

Participant Application

We are pleased to present Five Weeks to a Social Library, the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. The course was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software. The course will be taught using a variety of social software tools so that the participants acquire experience using the tools while they are taking part in the class. The course will make use of synchronous online communication, with one or two weekly Webcasts and many IM or Skype chat sessions made available to students each week. By the end of the course, each student will develop a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library.

Five Weeks to a Social Library will take place between February 12 and March 17, 2007 and will be limited to forty participants. However, course content will be freely viewable to interested parties and all live Webcasts will be archived for later viewing.

We are currently accepting applications for participants in the course. The application process is designed to ensure that the course will benefit those librarians who have the most to gain from learning about social software and who would not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education. If you are interested in learning how to use and implement social software tools at your library, please consider applying. The course will cover the following topics:

Participation Requirements

Each participant will take part in a weekly small group chat (either via VoIP or IM) with four other participants and a facilitator and will have the opportunity to chat with social software experts throughout the week. They will also attend at least one of two live Webcasts offered weekly. There will be weekly readings, podcasts, and Webcasts for the users to peruse and discuss. Each user will have a blog on which to post reflections on what they are learning and will be able to read and comment on other participants’ blogs. The final assignment for the course will involve developing a proposal for implementing a social software tool at their library.

Applicants must be self-directed, passionate about using social software to benefit their library, and willing and able to invest the time required to take part in the course. While it is not necessary to have had exposure to social software tools in the past, general comfort in the online medium is strongly recommended.

Users must have the following items to participate:

Application Procedure

Please email the following (as plain text, Word, or PDF) to sociallibrary@gmail.com by December 1, 2006:

Any questions about the application process may be addressed to the Planning Committee at sociallibrary@gmail.com.

Application Review: Applications will be reviewed by the planning committee.

Planning Committee:

Key Dates:

Topics: free the information!, online education, social software |

8 Responses to “Five Weeks to a Social Library: Participant Application”

  1. Ryan Says:
    October 2nd, 2006 at 10:27 am

    Hey Meredith,

    Looks good so far.

    Uh. . . After reading the organizer bios, I noticed you folks are all Academic Librarians. . . Where per se, was the public library rep? Ahem, ahem, ahem.

    Glad to see you had good representation for presenters though! I can’t wait to see the materials.

  2. Meredith Farkas Says:
    October 2nd, 2006 at 10:53 am

    Thanks Ryan!

    As you’d noticed, public libraries and other settings will be represented in the presentations, readings, etc. We certainly don’t intend for this to reflect only our vision of libraries. And some of us have worked in public libraries in the past (at least I did).

    The organizers were people who volunteered to help me with this. If someone from a public library had volunteered to help me organize this, I would have been happy to have them.

  3. Dorothea Says:
    October 2nd, 2006 at 5:03 pm

    With any luck at all, our participant base will skew heavily toward public librarians. I know that’s my hope.

  4. Ryan Says:
    October 2nd, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Ha! I placed a “chastise” tag in the comment (using diamond brackets) to illustrate that I was just teasing you, but your system took it as a legit tag!

    I wonder if “chastise” actually has a purpose in the WP api! :)

    As I said before — I can’t wait!

  5. joshua m. neff Says:
    October 3rd, 2006 at 8:03 am

    When you put a “chastise” tag in your comments, a little hand comes out and slaps Meredith on the wrist.

    By the way, Meredith, I’m putting a “condiment” tag in this comment, so you can have some ketchup with your fries.

  6. Meredith Farkas Says:
    October 3rd, 2006 at 9:02 am

    mmmmmm….. condiments!

    Ouch!

    Stupid chastize tag! ;)

  7. Ryan Says:
    October 3rd, 2006 at 11:59 am

    Lol!

    Murphy’s Future: Web 3.0 will expand XML to provide irl punishments and rewards. Sounds good and dangerous. I like it.

    The danger would be mash-ups like “condiment” and “fruitsalad” in the same post. yeeccchhhh!

  8. The Distant Librarian Says:
    October 4th, 2006 at 9:07 pm

    DistLib LinkDump…

    …