This session will employ an online collaborative idea space where participants can share their experiences and recommend their own publicity tools and tricks.

Whether you have full-support from all faculty (lucky you!) or varying levels of involvement from isolated departments or instructors here and there, we all have access to the tools we need to spark interest, take conversations to the next level, engage individuals, and create collaborative environments for designing information literacy sessions and programs.

Games generally have a learning curve—the more you play, the better you become. Increasingly, however, gamers turn to tips and tricks resources for shortcuts, strategies and cheat codes that can give them the edge and propel them to the next level. When it comes to research, the stakes for students are often too high for them to invest the time it takes to master the challenges in the library, but where are the accompanying guides to help them through the tough parts?

Library Secrets! is a developing Tips, Tricks and Hints project designed to provide students with the cheat codes to the library—all the information that is already there, imbedded in thickly worded database instructions, dull small type on the policies page, hidden in dusty manuals, but in manageable pieces, like a helpful suggestion passed surreptitiously outside the bookie’s window: “here’s the horse to put your money on, don’t waste your time with the others”.

Library Secrets! incorporates social software applications to create a collaborative venue for discussing library research, sharing tips and gloating about successes when users have cashed their chips at the end of the process. Part of the “gamble” on the library’s end is predicting how and if students will take to these new technologies. This project is being developed as part of the presenter’s final project as a resident librarian.

This session will present the background research that went into developing the program, the various technologies that are being used and future opportunities for development on the horizon.

According to Technorati, the blog search engine, there are 244 blogs that primarily concern themselves with libraries and so-called 2.0 technologies. The blogs range from the well known Tame the Web and Shifted Librarian to library students attempting to sort out the deluge of information on blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social networking services and how these applications and services help, hinder, harm or haunt libraries and librarians. As libraries and librarians make decisions about how to reach out to patrons and communities, increasingly, the decisions we make involve social software applications.

In 2006, the author graduated from library school with an under-used laptop and the ability to create static HTML documents, but with a strong aversion to all things “computer-y” and little interest in or understanding of technology and its relationship to libraries. A two-year residency at a community college, free range to explore any and all avenues of librarianship and the pressing need to create a final “project”, however, created the opportunity for her to explore social software in its many variations and applications. With an introduction to creating wiki research guides, free posting reign on the library blog and chances to create workshops on any subject of her choosing, the newly tech-dorked librarian jumped head-first into what has widely touted as Library 2.0. She now subscribes to technology blogs, teaches workshops on using wikis in the classroom, instructs colleagues on establishing del.icio.us accounts and has dozens of other social software projects going at once.