Library Academy at Region XI

Another fine day of professional development at ESC XI.  I always learn at least one interesting thing, and today I learned several.  I will be looking over my list of search engines to add to my own bag of tricks.
If you are here looking for the prezi from my presentation, "The Invisible Web,"  here is the link.  I will also place it in the presentation handouts section at the right. The bibliography is an embedded PDF, but let me know if you would like a copy of it.  Thank you to everyone who attended.  One thing that we discussed, but didn't really have time to finish was getting the teachers interested in the invisible web.  Here are some ideas of ways to draw faculty into the deeper water of some rich resources:

• See if you can get on the agenda for a departmental meeting and show them some subject specific databases or search engines.  You can push these out via email or a newsletter, but I think that you will have more success face to face.
• See if you can offer a little library tip of the month (or fortnight) at the faculty meeting.  You can use this as an opportunity to get the invisible web on their radar.
• Offer a training class through your district or after school.  Offer  personalized tutorials.  
• See if you can get your technology person on board with you to help get the message out.
• Offer to put together pathfinders or a delicious tag cloud or another form of split level searching, where you've already done the first level for them.
• See if you can meet with grade level teams to show them a few things.
• Continue to send out links to specific teachers and departments as you find them.  Not everyone will read them, but some will.  
• Sell it as a purple cow.  Teaching people how to search the invisible web makes them remarkable researchers.

Remember that searching is easy, finding is hard.  You add value every day by helping people learn how to do things they didn't even know they needed to do!