Welcome to K-LIRT’s New Site

Welcome to the new site for The Kansas Library Association’s Instruction Round Table (K-LIRT)!  This site has many functions:

1. It’s central feature is a blog that provides a means for K-LIRT’s  officers and members to share announcements, teaching strategies, tools, or questions.
2. It’s pages include an archive of K-LIRT’s activities at conferences and of its business meeting minutes.
3. It’s pages also convey current information including the organization’s by-laws, contact information for officers, lists of instruction resources for teachers and faculty, and information about how to become a member.

If you would like to post to the blog or if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact K-LIRT’s Chair, Ted Gentle at egentle@emporia.edu

 

Welcome!

Welcome to K-LIRT’s blog! The purpose of this blog is simple: to facilitate communication among K-LIRT members. Feel free to share your questions, requests for information, insights, amusing stories, useful resources, and anything else you feel may be of interest to other’s who are interested in library instruction.

At the moment, only K-LIRT members are authorized to make posts and comments. We could loosen the restrictions and enable others to comment and post, if we wish. If you have opinions on this, please feel free to share them by making a comment to this post.

If you have any questions or concerns that you wish to address to me, please feel free to do so by contacting me by phone or e-mail at:

Jason Coleman
K-LIRT Coordinator
Hale Library, Rm. 207
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-7427
coleman@ksu.edu

Originally posted Sunday, January 29, 2006 by Jason Coleman

About Blogs

I imagine that many of you are, like me, new to the world of blogging. Recently I’ve been looking for pithy articles or sites that provide an overview of what blogs and the practice of blogging are all about. I’ve not found the proverbial gold mine, but I have come across a few decent nuggets. I’ve listed them at the end of this post.

If any of you know of useful resources about blogging, please share by commenting to this post.

A few useful online sources on blogs/blogging:

• Wikipedia’s definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
• Weblogs Basics from About.com: http://weblogs.about.com/od/weblogsbasics/
• Jay Cross’ article on blogs: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/apr2002/ttools.html

Originally posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 by Jason Coleman

Meeting in Topeka

Last week, I went to the 2nd of three meetings with the Dept. of Education and K-12 librarians to upgrade Library Standards for K-12 and to add in Technology Standards. Since I don’t work with K-12, I was lucky to be in a group with two librarians who were knowledgable and practical. Our goal was to develop examples of student exercises for one of the standards and the indicators within that standard. It was quite interesting to hear that students as young as Grade 5 are taught about Interlibrary Loan and other such examples. For our K-Lirt group, it means we can look at these standards (when they’re finished) and see where and how we can add to the Information Literacy continuum for Kansas students. I let you know when it’s all finished, but that’s another blog in another part of the Internet universe!

Originally posted by Rita Sevart on Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Giving up our education mission

In the College of DuPage teleconference last Friday, Rick Anderson said one of the ways to fix what’s wrong with libraries is to give up the “educator function.” I heard a librarian at Texas A & M who works with LibQUAL+ say we need to reconsider the way we provide library instruction. Is anyone looking at ways to reinvent their library instruction program? Has anyone quit providing one-shot instruction? Anyone doing something new and innovative?

Judy Druse
Washburn University

originally posted on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 by Judy Druse

Recommend listservs for instruction

Do any of you monitor any listservs that you would recommend for librarians insterested in instruction? I monitor ALA’s Information Literacy Instruction Listserv and AASL/ACRL’s INFOLIT Listserv. I find both very interesting and informative. The former has become quite active recently and has had a very provocative string of posts about how to get students to pay attention.

originally posted Sunday, February 12, 2006 by Jason Coleman

What would you like to see on the K-LIRT Website?

Over the next two months I am planning to redesign and expand the K-LIRT website http://skyways.lib.ks.us/KLA/divisions/lirt/

I’m curious to know what features you would like to see on the site. I can’t promise that I will be able to include all of them, but I’ll do my best!

originally posted Monday, February 27, 2006 by Jason Coleman

Mr Sapo: a very cool search tool

If you haven’t yet investigated MrSapo.com, I strongly encourage you to do so. What the heck is it, you ask? Well, essentially, it’s a directory of Web search engines. What’s cool about it, though, is that you can type in a term and then click the name of the search engine to see the results from that search engine. This makes it very, very, very (you get the point) easy to quicly compare search engines. It’s also a great tool for discovering new search engines.

Make sure to check out the References tab (in the top right). This will give you a set of buttons for sites like Google Scholar, Answers.com, LII, Scirus, et al.

Try it: you’ll like it!

Originally posted Sunday, April 16, 2006 by Jason Coleman

K-LIRT Business Meeting Minutes CULS 2006

CULS Meeting Minutes

Minutes
K-LIRT Business Meeting
CULS, Salina, KS
October 6, 2006

Members in attendance: Mary Alice Wade, Jason Coleman, Judy Salm, Patrica Renn-Scanlon, Judy Druse, Angela Barger, Sara K. Kearns, Kristin Whitehair

I. Membership and Budget Update

A. Membership: K-LIRT Secretary/Treasurer, Kristin Whitehair, reported that K-LIRT had 25 members as of September 6, 2006.

B. Budget: Kristin reported that K-LIRT has a current balance of $733.14.

II. Old Business: K-LIRT website

A. Judy Bastin, chair, reported that KLA is exploring the option of hiring a web developer to redo the website. A decision will be made in October. This will affect the K-LIRT website.

III. New Business

A. Program suggestions for Tri-Conference 2007 (proposals due Nov. 1).
1. Show and tell session.
2. Create a teaser for the summer institute. It would be a short session about blogs, wikis, and games like Second Life. This option appeared to be the consensus of the group.

B. Program suggestions for Summer Institute 2007
1. A speaker about gaming and simulations in libraries including such software as Second Life.
2. Discussion about the use fob logs, wikis, and instant messaging. This appeared to be the consensus of the group.

C. KLA update: Judy Bastin, chair, reported KLA is exploring the option of a web developer for the website. Additionally, KLA is working on planning future Tri-Conferences. Due to a retirement of the primary organizer this responsibility is now in new hands.

D. Other
1. Discussion of various conferences such as LOEX.
2. It was suggested that K-LIRT consider video conferencing.

Respectfully submitted,

Kristin Whitehair
K-LIRT Secretary/Treasurer

Web 2.0 video

Dr. Mike Wesch from KSU’s Anthropology Department created this video about Web 2.0.

Web 2.0…The Web is Us/ing Us

Originally posted Tuesday, February 06, 2007 by Kristin Whitehair