Angela Noble, Schools Literacy & Resource Adviser for Monmouthshire & Torfaen

I am the service manager of a Schools Literacy & Resource Centre for Monmouthshire & Torfaen.  After 2 days training on social media I am slightly less mystified and feel enthusiastic with regard to superceding our current static web site with more easily up dated web content such as blogs and Twitter!
My project for Wise Kids is to set up a blog for our service with relevant links and some mixed media such as YouTube and Flicker.

Setting up a collaborative blog or wiki for distance learning students

I'm Catherine Drake and I'm the information advisor for Art & Design at UWIC.  We've just done a round of library inductions, so it has been very busy here.

My job involves teaching information literacy skills to students based at Llandaff, managing the book budget, stock collection, enquiry work and a bit of cataloguing.

For this project, I'm going to look into setting up a wiki or a blog for a group of doctoral students that I will be teaching early in October.  Many of these students live and work abroad, so this will enable them to access the presentation with links to useful sites & information.    I'm focusing on a small group of guinea pigs to assess how useful and successful it will be.  If it's something that students appreciate and want, then we can use this as a case study to show management that we need to embed social media more into overall library policy, particularly relating to how we inform and teach our students.

Web 2.0 Project for Swansea Libraries

Hello,

We are Nat and Emma and we are the Programme and Exhibitions Team for Swansea Libraries. We have an incredibly varied role, working with the team in HQ, Swansea Central Library and the community libraries as well as many external partners. We are also part of the team that looks after the Swansea Libraries Facebook and Twitter accounts, which were set up over a year ago.

Our project is to use Web 2.0 tools to create a wiki for staff, with access to shared documents, a google calendar with events listings and significant dates, useful links and access to our own digital resources. We think this should be particularly useful as it can be quickly and easily updated, accessed out of library hours if necessary and from non-networked PCs, presenting library staff with useful and relevant information all in one place.

We are also going to be taking over the unofficial blog by ‘Paige Turner’, making it official, renaming it ‘Swansea Libraries’ and rebranding it to tie in with our other accounts. The blog posts will feed into Facebook and Twitter as well as our new wiki. We will be using the tools we learnt about during the training to provide up to date and interesting content as well as useful information and links.

Torfaen Library Service - WISE KIDS Project

Hi, my name is Rosie Bradley. I work for Torfaen Library service. I have 2 jobs: Libraries and Learning Officer and Library Assistant - 18.5 hrs each.
I have learned lots of really useful new skills in social networking at the Wise Kids training sessions and have set out my rough plan of action below.
Plan
1. I am going to set up an interactive page on Facebook - probably in 'discussions' for the IT drop-in customers. It will mean we have to show most of them how to use Fb but it will give them a chance to ask us for help in between our classes. I would also like the reading groups to use Facebook discussions page to keep in touch with each other during the 3 weeks they are reading the chosen book.
2. The blog page I have set up will be continued as soon as I have the all-clear from senior management. I think it will be another point of contact and hopefully find a new group of customers. It could be linked to the launch of our ebook system next month and provide a guide to using ebooks, a few book suggestions and reviews. Ebooks may mean we have a new generation of customers who rarely set foot in the library but still borrow books. This sounds quite scary - but they will hopefully be brand new customers and many of our existing ones will carry on as before.
3. I have started using Hootsuite and am finding it very helpful. It is easy to spot when someone has mentioned or retweeted you so you can respond. I also like the facility to keep a list of particular #trends or @favouritepeople.
4. I will set up links between Fb, Twitter, Blogger and the website to make it easier to move around between them and update status on several at one time.
5. I hope to set up some tutorials for the IT drop-in customers to help them navigate around our online resources and to help them learn word processing tasks.

See you all in November!