Pass-It-On # 2

The 2nd Pass-It-On experience was very positive. Youngish' (to me, anyway !aged about 20) male customer was keen to find an old friend, and had tried the usual basic, non-computerised avenues of the white pages and the electoral roll. Having drawn a blank here, I ventured the idea of Facebook or such like. He recoiled in horror. He was not going to buy into this social networking thing. His self-stated computer-illiteracy was also an issue for him. After a bit of encouragement and a privileged look at my Facebook account, he was starting to warm to the idea. We were off to a good start with a library card, but no Pharos account. Easily solved. Next step, log-on to Facebook. Slight glitch, no email account. OK, back to the drawing board and setting up of a gmail account. Sorted. Now, back to Facebook. Get the account set-up and a bit of a heads-up on security settings, profile info, adding widgets & gadgets, and we were away and laughing. I left him to it at this stage and an hour later he departed; having successfully found the person he was looking for, and admitting to a liking for this newly discovered technology. Satisfied customer and satisfied staff member :-)

The public pod

I forgot to mention the experience of sitting in the public pod with the rest of the great unwashed (and yes, I do mean that literally !) Unfortunately, the only time I could get on the computer was between 3-4pm, so my fellow computer-users were all of the teenage variety, joshing around and doing silly things on Bebo, complete with all the teenage mating rituals that students of human nature (like me) find fascinating. I did have to pull the old "excuse me, could you keep it down please, I'm trying to do some study here", which actually seemed to work quite well in that they all left the library not long after that, which is very unusual. However, the thought did occur to me that this could be a great way of moving on the unruly teenagers - just station a staff member in the pod and it totally cramps their style ! Well, one can only dream ...

It was an experience I would not like to repeat, as it was very noisy and quite distracting. I guess my timing was not optimal though.

Productivity et al

This week I tackled the Productivity 1 module, but alas, have not yet finished this. I started with the "group" section, which progressed smoothly (the "Word" stuff being easy for me with my previous long-term secretarial experience). HOWEVER, the Excel spreadsheet ? No idea. Never had to set one up, and have absolutely no idea how to do this. I have never used Excel other than to LOOK at things - so navigating between the tabs is about the only Excel skill I have. Oh, and I guess I could probably replace text or something similar, given that the Microsoft Office programmes conveniently use the same commands. I also complete the "Pass It On" module, which I was very pleased with. I taught a (very reluctant) colleague how to set up a Flickr account, and she was actually quite excited about it by the end of it all ! Unfortunately, this week I have not been timetabled any CCL Learn time and we have 3 people away sick, so I'm not sure when I'm going to get the chance to catch up on what I'm supposed to be doing this week. Perhaps I'll have to have a go from home...

Overdrive

Well, although not strictly CCL Learn, it is still CCL and it is still learning, AND I found it very exciting so I'm going to share it with you. I'm even blogging from home I'm so enthusastic about this ! Overdrive is going to be launched by CCL in early October and basically will allow customers to download audiobooks FREE from our website to a variety of different media (computer, burn onto disc, iPod, MP3 player etc, etc). What is particularly pleasing to me is the simplicity of it all. It seems very user-friendly; in fact I plan to download something to my iTouch later today :-) Although we won't have a huge selection of titles initially, it will be expanding all the time. Anyway, for those of you who, like me, find having too much choice overwhelming (like the cereal aisle at the supermarket) having a smaller collection is not always a bad thing ! At this stage it will be a remote access service, so it's all DIY at home (or work I guess), and I for one am looking forward to it's arrival ...