This has been a good week. The Twitter account continues to get new followers on an almost daily basis; I published the LibGuide I was creating on legal apps so that our patrons can access it from our Resource Guide page; and I have begun playing around with the IU course management system, Oncourse.
I was excited to see that, though I do not have my own course this Fall, I could still get a practice Oncourse site to explore. From my own IU education, I knew there were a plethora of features available on Oncourse, from forums to email to wikis and more, but I suspected that faculty do not use all of these resources, and may not even know the range of resources Oncourse provides; thus my interest in playing with it! Today, that experimenting paid off in spades. Two people approached me today asking about the features of Oncourse. I walked them both through my site, showed them things I had already tried, such as modules and quizzes, as well as other interactive features such as wikis, blogs, and chat rooms. I later heard that one of these individuals had been very pleased to learn about all that Oncourse can do, so I am so glad that I brought it up in the initial meeting.
One of the individuals I follow on Twitter had tweeted about an article on Android apps for lawyers. This sparked my interest in getting my LibGuide on law-related apps published – I have been working on it and editing it for a couple months – so I did just that and advertised it on our Twitter account (which also syncs with our Facebook account). The other librarians were pleased to see that I had published it and we will be formally announcing it to our non-tweeting faculty in a week or so.
While these are all little things, this was my first experience having others approach me for guidance in my specialty area or suggest that work I had done should be announced to law school community. It really made me feel like I had a true place at this school, and gave me the confidence to know that I can do this job, and I can do it well.
Next – off to Boston for the AALL Annual Meeting! I’ll tell you all about my experiences next week!
lawbrarianship 