Join us at the Monterey Public Library for an interactive discussion about people, technology, and libraries. Bring your war stories and your questions and be prepared to share—this is definitely NOT a “sage on the stage” event. (PowerPoints are forbidden!) This unstructured conversation may range from web development to info commons to everything in between which affects all types of libraries.

For more information see the Library Camp Monterey conference wiki page. http://www.infotodaywiki.com/IL2009

Struggling with the variety of technologies available and how they could best be used to achieve your objectives? Want to know how to incorporate social networking and other Web 2.0 tools into information services? Join this workshop to understand the elements of technology strategy planning and how to apply them. Learn how to create a strategic plan for your library, enabling effective use of technologies for your organizational needs. Bring your real-world issues and challenges and learn how to identify key elements of your current environment and organizational structure with an eye toward addressing needs. Tools for gaining approval to move forward will be explored, as well as optimizing Web 2.0 social networking tools into information services.

Technology trainers are responsible for technology training in labs, classrooms, or one-on-one with users or staff. Learn great tools and techniques and helpful advice from a successful expert with many years of coordinating and providing technology training for libraries. You’ll discover why learning styles are important, how to create an interactive learning community, strategies for communicating about technology, techniques for using activities, storytelling, and case studies to increase learning and retention. At the end of the workshop you’ll know how we learn and how to help others learn by incorporating hands-on activities that increase learning, participation, and retention; be able to organize and design a workshop to create a learning community; and recognize best training practices from other libraries and experienced trainers.

Looking for a simple way to have an attractive and useful web presence for your organization? One that’s easy to maintain too? Learn how it can be done with WordPress. Far more than just a blogging tool, WordPress can also power your whole library website. WordPress is a very popular,
free, open-source tool that is commonly used for creating blogs. But it’s also a very flexible content management system that can easily be used to create a complete website incorporating any number of pages about your library services and resources, as well as a page of frequently updated news or blog postings. This workshop covers some basics of WordPress but focuses primarily on the features that make it a powerful tool for website creation. Feel free to bring your laptop if you want to follow along during the session. We’ll provide you with a temporary WordPress website that you can use as a model for later development.

SharePoint is an excellent platform for enterprise collaboration and information management. Yet, about 50% of SharePoint deployments aren’t very, if at all, successful. Many deployments are “failing” because information workers are not adopting the system into their everyday tasks. Most often, it is because the architecture was not aligned with the key processes or the technology was installed and sites were created for various groups and teams according to an organizational chart and/or list of projects. As information experts we are poised to help SharePoint add true value to our organizations. We know that to capture and leverage a business’s valuable information assets, it has to be very simple for workers to contribute information to the system (whatever it may be) and, while doing so, apply some degree of classification and categorization with minimal knowhow. One of the best ways to make sure your SharePoint architecture enables this is to design your architecture with both taxonomies and “taskonomies” in mind. SP can be an excellent tool for collaboration and information management if we build sites as “information neighborhoods” and use content types and site columns to build our “information warehouse.” By analyzing and building according to key business processes and the information that is created and leveraged as part of those processes, we offer a tool that users will find great value in using and heartily adopt. This workshop shows you how to apply a “taskonomy” approach to design SharePoint architecture for enterprise collaboration and information management.

Social media is a way for libraries to encourage, promote, innovate, learn, adapt, improve customer service, engage library users in new ways, deliver new content and services, and discover and deliver what users want. With all these benefits, it’s no wonder libraries of all types and sizes
are exploring the social media landscape and using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, tagging, and more. This workshop is packed with practical advice, tools, tips, and tricks on easy ways to optimize your website for this new social environment. Whether your library is small or big, this workshop guides you through steps to develop a social media plan and ways to choose the best social media for your particular goals. It looks at ways to define and measure your library’s success with social media efforts and reviews tools and practical, easy-to-implement methods for evaluating social media plans. Head back to your workplace with a draft social media plan for your library and also with some ways to evaluate your plan.

It was hard enough keeping up with email and returning phone calls! Now the social web has created even more ways to learn and connect with other people. While this can be empowering, the rapid change can also leave us feeling overwhelmed and adrift in a sea of information. How do some people find the time to swim strong in this rapid current? This workshop helps you discover the tips, tricks, and tools that can make you a time management all-star! Whether you’re an old pro on the social web who is feeling swamped by all the new tools developing daily or are having trouble keeping up with information from the tools you already use, we have techniques to help. If you haven’t dipped a toe into the social web for fear you’ll be hit by a tidal wave in the wading pool, we can help you get started without fear of drowning. In this interactive workshop, two time management divas share suggestions and shortcuts for keeping up, eliminating the clutter and exploring new tools—all while keeping afloat.

For many public service librarians, the challenge of Library 2.0 isn’t the technology, it’s the users. Despite the extreme 2.0 savvy attributed to the Millennials in the buzz that dominated early 2.0 reports, the media is finally catching up to what many librarians have known all along: Both the Google Generation and Digital Immigrants need some help moving from passive consumer to active participant in the read/write web. Learn how to encourage library users, as well as librarians and IT staff, to be comfortable with the participatory web and why doing so is an important first step in bringing about inclusive library services and technologies our communities can embrace and extend. Come explore why the perceived savvy may not really be there, discuss ways to find the tech-(non?)savvy reality of your library’s community, and ways around digital divides. Come prepared to be inspired to share and learn ideas librarians can implement to meet their users’ needs while helping transform them into active participants in this changing digital age.

Get the most out of your camera by joining our experienced photographers and hearing their tips and tricks. Whether you have a standard website, a blog, or a wiki, text-only just won’t cut it anymore. Come learn all you need to know to create, edit, and add images to your website, market your library’s events, and how to take advantage of Creative Commons licensing to use others’ images on your site. This workshop not only covers licensing options, tips on choosing a digital camera, taking photos in your library, and managing your images, it also helps you take your digital images to the next level. Whether you have a pocket-size, “point-and-shoot” camera or an expensive digital SLR, learn how to capture a great photo every time by understanding how camera exposure and existing light work together; how to manage hundreds of images effectively; and how to gather tips and tricks for processing your photos on your computer, including correcting white balance, working with tone curves and contrast, saving the right image size for the job, and basic portrait touch-ups. Experienced picture-takers already familiar with their cameras and with downloading images to their computers will get the most out of this workshop.