Day 2

I attended this session interested to see how Casey Cardinia Libraries had allowed their staff to be more mobile in their work.

Casey Cardinia Libraries have gotten rid of assigned desk space for their senior management, branch managers and specialised staff.

They were all given laptops and mobile phones.

They utilised Microsoft office 365 and Microsoft teams to achieve mobility and allow the abolition of admin drives, all files were moved onto SharePoint.

Docking stations are available in all branch’s workrooms and in council buildings. Bookable Council meeting rooms were utilised when needed i.e. for meetings.

This allowed senior staff to rotate around branches and have more engagement with branch staff. Built trust and autonomy and saved on office costs.

The downfalls include difficulty of knowing where to send something to someone and the difficulty of finding workspace, it can also be a lot for staff to carry with them.

Michelle insisted that changes like this require training.

I enjoyed seeing how Casey Cardinia had taken on this change, there has always been issues at Eastern Regional Libraries (ERL) with an ‘us and them’ mentality between branches and administration, so it was very interesting to hear how this initiative allowed for greater engagement between branch staff and senior staff. ERL have been moving towards using Microsoft Teams and moving files into the cloud, recently all management and administration staff have been given laptops and docking stations to replace their PC’s. This presentation offers the possibility of a way to address issues at ERL in the future and, for me, a positive presentation of Casey Cardinia as a place where I may wish to seek employment in the future.

Adventures in technology: experiences in facilitating a youth-led library website project

Sarah Thompson – Branch Manager, Manly Library, Northern Beaches Council Library

Michaela Wagland – Digital Producer, Northern Beaches Council Library

I attended this presentation interested to know more about how this program engaged young people in the community and how they instigated a program that was youth-led.

Art project and website created entirely by teens, tinydooors.com.au, library staff were assistants/facilitators but not leaders.

Library staff handed over the decision making to the teens.

Let them go on tangents and find their own way back.

100% retention over 9 months.

Learning as a group helped encourage bonding.

Social media, particularly Instagram is how young people want to communicate and share.

It was interesting to see how successful this project was in engaging and retaining the interest of young people over a significant period of time. This is a great example that I can take back to management to show how successful giving young people power and autonomy over the programs we offer can be. Prior to Covid-19 restrictions the digital literacy team had hoped to run an event for young people to have a say in what they would like from the library.

Augmented libraries: preparing public libraries for virtual & augmented reality

Scott Mundell – Library Technician, Yarra Plenty Regional Libraries

Steven Mundell – Team Leader Digital and Community Learning, Yarra Libraries

I was interested to see how AR and VR have been used at other libraries and what opportunities or possibilities it could present.

The Mundell’s won the 2018 Margery C Ramsay scholarship and travelled to the US to research state-wide initiatives that introduced virtual reality to over 100 public libraries, this presentation reported on what they found.

Programs often had volunteers running them, sometimes teen volunteers.

VR has been used for preserving street art and bringing it ‘into’ the library.

VR program called 1000 cuts allows user to experience racism throughout lifespan.

I found the idea of Immersive Storytelling very interesting- if there’s a special place you want to show someone, or have a story about, it could be done ‘in’ that place but still in the library.

Mundell’s have created a website called augmentedlibraries.com

Follow #augmentedlibraries on twitter.

A VR portrait gallery is being created.

Data shows that using VR can have lasting benefits to learning and engagement.

This presentation provided me with greater knowledge of the programs available in VR as well as the possibility of using VR to engage young people and encourage them to run programs themselves. It also provided me with a website and twitter # to follow to stay more connected with other libraries engaging in VR, as well as evidence of the value of VR as an educational tool.

Kimberley Williams – Digital Curation Specialist, University of Sydney

Documentation is something that I have not been particularly good at in the past and, as part of my role requires me to be innovative and to create new programs, it is important that I improve my documentation skills so that these programs can be more easily shared. As such, I attended this presentation in the hopes of gaining greater knowledge and skills around documentation.

It is important to document what we do, how we do it etc.

Not just what we do but what others do for us too.

Documentation and metadata need to be consistent.

Good documentation allows us to stop re-inventing the wheel – a standardised project document allows the re-use of processes or at least somewhere to start.

Build on the work of others.

Write documents as if your audience is someone who knows nothing. Give context, the documentation could be used by someone 10 years from now.