So much blogging going on

The Faculty Internationalization Initiative is well underway at Champlain. How do I know? Because there's a whole lot of blogging going on. Some faculty are on their way, some are out in the world right now, and some are already back in the States. But no matter where in the world they are, you can read about their adventures, observations, and experiences on their blogs. Professors David Kite, Bob Mayer, Richard Hunt, and of course Gary Scudder are full of interesting tales. I know Prof. Scudder heads out this weekend so add their blogs to you RSS for updates.

It's a Core Blog!

Look to the right.

Notice that serious thinker over in the big, black, blog roll. That serious thinker is a great new addition to the library's Feevy: it is the Core Development Team's new blog!

This new blog offers anyone at Champlain the chance to keep up on how the new Core is developing. In just a few postings, I have learned a great deal about the next semester including its theme, the texts, the central questions, and how global modules will fit in.

Thanks to David Kite, Jen Vincent, and Bob Mayer (the CDT Team) for entering the blogosphere and keeping us all up to date!

Super Busy at the MIC bring Technology out into the Open

School started today and getting the Library ready for the influx of 475 new first years as well as returning students, new faculty, new deans, and new adjuncts has been a whirlwind. But the results are outstanding. Largely this is due to our library crew embracing and taking technology to a whole new level. We are starting out the year with a series of new initiatives that are pretty cool. Here are some of the highlights:
1. We have started using wikis to create subject guides. What a relief! You can actually update and modify the pages to accomodate instructor's needs, students' feedback and new additions to the collection. Awesome and very well received. Hopefully they will be very used.
2. We are trying chat reference. We've held back from chat in the past because we are such a small staff but with more of our students going abroad and a new librarian in the mix, we thought it was time to give it a go. More on that as the school year progresses...it's hard to know how that's working on day 1.
3. We are blogging (as you well know since you are reading it!) We are maintaining a library blog to highlight events at the library but also things the librarians think are cool. (Oh, there are so many).
4. We are tracking reference questions using a free, online tool from zoho. We just stareted it today but it was so much easier to keep track of questions. We kept the screen open and the form is easy to fill out and WHAM, we've got improved data on reference.
5. We have been spending most of the summer adding our newest additions to the collection into Flickr. I think it will be a cool way for faculty, and maybe even students, to share books with one another, comment, suggest other books, and get to know our collection better, which is changing rapidly.

We are giving these technologies a go and I am so proud to work somewhere that is willing to take that chance. It's a great way to kick off the school year: invigorated, excited, and trying new things. It might make all of us insanely busy, but it feels insanely great.

Other cool blogs

In thinking about what else we could blog about, there are plenty of interesting blogs out there, library related or not, that give some ideas or are worth commenting on. That's what the Feevy is for! Feevy is a dynamic blog roll where we can see when blogs we like have new posts and the first few lines of that post. I have loved having it on my personal blog. If you have any suggestions for blogs you want to see added, let me know. Also, it would be a great way to highlight other campus blogs. I know Elaine Young blogs regularly...who knows who else might be at it.