ALPS LINK Newsletter - Summer 2008

Table of contents:

1. Let LINK Throw You a Lifesaver!
2. "Upload Your Learning Objects": Award Winners!
3. Fall Campaign Preview: Laud a Librarian

1. Let LINK Throw You a Lifesaver!

This is the summer of new interfaces. Most notably, Ebsco will be rolling out a major change to its interface in early July. OvidSP was launched in the early summer and we're also expecting new interfaces from ProQuest and WilsonWeb.

You may be dreading the thought of going back through all your guides, reworking strategies, and updating all the screen captures.  Let LINK throw you a lifesafer! If you create a guide to one of the "new" interfaces, why not upload that guide to LINK?   Why recreate the wheel when you can borrow the excellent work of your colleagues?  Or perhaps you'd like to work collaboratively on guides to the new interfaces.  If you're interested in finding out who's working on which guides, please contact Liza Hutchison at lhutchison@langara.bc.ca   We'll send out a list of these guides in early August.

If you're not working on guides for the new interfaces, you're probably working on some other great guide or learning object.  Whatever your summer project is, upload it to LINK and share your hard work to benefit your colleagues.  Remember that you can easily sign up to receive notice of each new learning object uploaded to LINK. Go to the LINK portal at http://www.eln.bc.ca/irl/ and click on the RSS link next to RECENT UPLOADS. Save that URL to your blog reader, and you'll receive notice of every new object.

2. "Upload Your Learning Objects": Award Winners!

The theme of fall 2007 LINK promotion campaign was "Upload Your Learning Objects -- Win Prizes!" The campaign was a huge success, with more than 60 objects uploaded. At the ALPS meeting on December 7 we handed out prizes for 13 great learning objects. The winning objects include database guides, information literacy tutorials, bookmarks, animated tutorials, videos, and much more. If you haven't already seen the list of prize-winning objects and their creators, here it is: Fall '07 Uploading Contest: Prize Winners!  We hope it inspires you to start uploading. 

3. Fall Campaign Preview: Laud a Librarian

This is to give you a tantalizing glimpse of the fall 2008 promotion campaign. We all know that librarians are perfectionists; our own work is never quite good enough for our standards. At the same time, we constantly see colleagues turning out great guides, handouts, and webpages that we use all the time. Well, if our colleagues are too shy to nominate their own work for inclusion in LINK, we'll just have to do it for them!

The fall campaign will ask you to let us know when you discover great guides and learning objects created by librarians at your or other academic libraries. Maybe you're answering a question on AskAway and discover the amazing resource that another librarian has put together. Well, don't keep it a secret! Let us know! We'll ask that librarian for permission to include their learning object in LINK. This will help other librarians discover that learning object too.