On Sunday, I will be leaving for the 5th International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries (QQML) in Rome Italy. I’m very excited because it’s a great conference with cutting-edge research reported by participants from all over the world, and of course, it’s in Rome.
My presentation is about a study I recently conducted to examine reference librarians’ adoption of cloud computing technologies, particularly the general-purposed and consumer-oriented SaaS tools, including but not limited to cloud-based video services (e.g. YouTube), file sharing services (e.g. Dropbox), information collection services (e.g. Google Forms), calendar services (e.g. Google Calendar), custom social networking sites (e.g. Ning) and forums (e.g. VoiceThread). The study discovered that reference librarians were using these tools for a variety of different purposes, ranging from facilitating internal communication and collaborative work, to supporting information literacy instruction. In the meantime, librarians also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using these tools. Overall, this was an interesting study. And I will be sure to share the results with my students in the Reference and Information Service class in the fall. Maybe I will even ask them to each explore one of the tools so that they can better understand and reflect upon the study findings – hands-on experience is always an effective learning strategy.
Anyways, I very much look forward to QQML 2013 and will definitely dedicate a blog entry to this conference trip once I get back.
(photo from http://www.entechcomputers.com/resources/what-is-cloud-computing/)
Formalized Curiosity 