More Thing 7. Web Conferencing

The WebJunction Into to Web Conferencing was informational. What's great about online learning is that it is brought to us and doesn't require travel time or cost. I would think that technical hurdles would be the biggest problem. I checked out both the MINITEX Webinars and the OPAL programs and found the OPAL presentation to be more inviting and the Master Schedule easier to navigate.

I chose to "attend" the program "Batter Up! Baseball at the Library of Congress" and accessed it at the announced time. I was surprised to hear Tom Peters welcome ME to the program! That was spooky. I didn't answer him, but I wondered if he could hear me breathing! Unfortunately, the program had been canceled due to a lack of interest, so there were just the three presenters, Tom, Judy and Peter, and one participant, me. Weird. I listened in live while they discussed the reasons for the poor response and the possibility of rescheduling the program closer to baseball's opening day, March 31. They also contemplated various ways to advertise the program, including message boards and Facebook.

Next, I located a program in the OPAL Archives that interested me, "Censorship: How It Affects Libraries & Library Patrons in a Democracy". It was given in Sept 2006 by Melora Norman, the Outreach/Special Services Coordinator for the Maine State Library. Not being a live program I couldn't interact if I had wanted to, however, I was able to follow the dialogue on the left side of the screen and hear the question and answer session at the end. Doing a program from the Archives had the advantage of being able to replay anything that I wanted repeated. Her presentation was very interesting and covered selection vs. censorship, the history of censorship, individual and parental responsibility, and in general the challenge of maintaining freedom of expression while considering possible needs for protection.