Webinars and U(seless warranties)

This post is... late. Very late. My computer conked out on me again last weekend (faulty adapter this time) and it took me until Wednesday to get the part shipped in. The process was expensive, frustrating and worrisome, not to mention redolent of deja vu. If you'll recall, something similar happened to me earlier in the semester, immediately after my computer's warranty expired. As far as I'm concerned, this was no coincidence. Of course, all this hand-wringing doesn't explain why I didn't get around to writing until today, but as I don't really have a good answer, we'll just go with shock and trauma--definitely not that I was writing the final paper for 500 instead.

Naturally, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Not only did I conduct my first-ever webinar, but I got to listen to the majority of my class's first forays into this brave new world as well.  I've got to say, you all did much better than I. My group's troubles began with a previously-undiscovered incompatibility between Elluminate and Keynote and, despite some fancy footwork, we had a hard time working out all the bugs and getting the presentation underway. I know its rather late in the game for such advise,  but if you happen to listen to my group's archived presentation you can probably just skip about the first five minutes as its just us whispering to each other about how to get the webcam working. Add in a healthy dose of public-speaking jitters and the fact that I thought my teammate was mouthing "wrap it up" when he was actually asking for a bit of back-and-forth, and my performance could best be characterized as amateur. So, sorry, teammates and classmates. We're just going to have to chalk this one up to the learning curve. Oh, and speaking of learning: my biggest takeaway was definitely to come prepared for questions. If you don't know, you can always prevaricate or suggest other resources, or, as a last resort, just say so.

Due to my troubles, I wasn't able to participate in any of the webinars live, so I went to the archives on the Wikispace when I finally got my computer back in order to listen to what everybody else had to say. These are the order I watched them in:

1. Is Access a Civil Right?
2. Three Blind Mice
3. Pow-wow at Your Library: Serving Native American Youth
4. Open Access: Less Money, Less Problems

Given what had just been going on in my life, I found the first one rather ironic and a little bit eye-opening. Here I am whining about not being able to charge my laptop for three days when a significant proportion of African- and Hispanic-American families earning less than $30,000 a year don't even have a computer. I can't imagine having to catch a bus or walk to the public library in order to type an assignment for school over the course of several 30-60 minute sessions. I can also intimately empathize with all the poor country-dwelling schmucks who are getting screwed over by internet service providers. My rural family didn't get supposedly "high speed" internet until I went to college, and this involved installing a satellite dish in the back yard which lost signal every time it rained. In the end, this webinar led me to conclude for a variety of reasons that yes, internet access is definitely a civil right.

The "Three Blind Mice" tutorial also dealt with an underserved sector of the population and had a lot of interesting observations about the library experience of a blind or low vision person. Many of this group's suggestions were eminently practical and insightful. These included such common-sense dictates as "clean up the aisles" and "don't pet the guide-dog" as well as "introduce yourself" so that the patron can later ask for and identify you by name. Following this, I listened to the "Pow-Wow at your Library" webinar, which actually addressed some of the same issues, like sensitivity and the importance of storytime. Other issues were unique to this population. Since Native Americans are not as visible a minority group as others in this country, many libraries still have materials that may be offensive or inaccurate. Stories like "The Bernstein Bears Give Thanks" or "The Indian in the Cupboard", which we all grew up reading, actually contain messages that, upon reflection, do not portray Native Americans all that accurately. I also heard some echoes of my own group's  presentation in the Pow-Wow group's exhortations to identify the subgroup living in the library's community. For us, that meant figuring out which country our immigrants came from, while for them it had more to do with specific tribes and reservations.

Lastly, I felt like I should shake things up by including a copyright webinar, so I watched the open access presentation by Amanda, Kayla and Joanna. They had some really interesting things to say about "copyleft" and creative commons, as well as the development of open-access journals. I was especially excited to hear about Senator Lieberman's bill to make publicly-funded research publicly available until they said that he'd been introducing it over and over for years. More heartening was the speed at which open access journals have so far developed readership as opposed to print journals. Even with the "permission crisis" of publishers restricting distribution rights from libraries, I think this trend can go a long way towards making Sen. Lieberman's dream come true.