NECode4Lib
Posted December 5, 2016 by Amanda Pizzollo
Howdy fellow interwebs browsers! This week I wanted to talk about the NECode4Lib event on 12/5. So, NECode4Lib was a fun and informative informal conference organized by librarians from around New England (with special attention to Johanna Radding, former SLIS West program manager, and Abby Baines, current SLIS West prof, who did a lot of the work!). It was held in the Red Barn at Hampshire which is beautiful, especially with sparkling snow on the ground outside. Talks included a range of topics. For a full list, visit here: https://wiki.code4lib.org/NECode4lib_2016. I think some of the slides will be going up soon too.
Librarians are so great at collaborating and sharing information (duh on that last one I guess). I love that I’m in a profession now where there are often conferences like this one- and ones bigger and smaller than this. It’s such a great way to meet people and learn about what other folks are doing. I especially enjoyed a lightening talk on lightening talks by a couple folks at MIT because they talked about how their department does a monthly lightening talks meeting. What a great idea! You could get a quick glance at what your colleagues are doing without getting deep in the weeds, and then everyone has a better idea of the holistic picture of the library. There were a lot of great talks yesterday at the conference, and I’m looking forward to learning more about some new to me concepts and techniques for work and non-work. And- I’m totally going to start using Habitica (https://habitica.com/static/front). Plus, I learned some fun ways to present- for instance Ian Walls from UMass did his presentation in story format- making a teachable moment from his work into a story about a young wizard with computing powers 🙂
I gave a lightening talk (5 mins) too, on Twine- an open source tool I just started using. If you loved choose your own adventure games growing up and want to make something similar online, this site is for you. Check it here: http://twinery.org/. I used it to make a plagiarism game and the first draft of a SLIS West virtual orientation. The plagiarism game is here: http://web.simmons.edu/~pizzollo/Games/Code%20of%20Honor%20(6).html. The other I’ll hold off on showcasing until it’s a little further developed, but I got the idea from Smith College Libraries who has one here: https://libtools.smith.edu/twine/. Rose, the librarian who created that tour was also there yesterday so that was really helpful when folks had questions about Twine (since I’m still new to it myself). MHC is working on a virtual tour using Twine too, so woot!
Oky doke, well that was fun. Now back to my last final of the semester!
Stay warm, friends.
~Manda