Thing 14: Time Management-Set up a meeting with Meet-O-Matic

What is Meet-O-Matic?
Meet-O-Matic  is a great way to schedule any event which includes several people – whether it’s a family get together, a night out with friends or a work meeting. You don’t need to register to use Meet-O-Matic and it’s very easy to use. The idea is that you set up an ‘event’ and input several days that are suitable. You then invite all attendees to go to a webpage and view the suggested times. They tick which they are able to attend, and by the end you should be able to see which time most people can make.

Outlook calendar or Meet-O-Matic?

Outlook provides the facility for you to suggest a time for an event, and e-mail it out to a number of participants. They can then accept or decline the invitation, or suggest a more suitable time. 

Advantages to using Outlook: 

• it’s integrated within your e-mail, so there is no need to visit a website, 
• Outlook can be set to notify participants as events are about to take place

Disadvantages to using Outlook: 

• only one date/time can be suggested at once, so it may take several attempts to find a mutually convenient time
•  all participants must be set up to use Outlook, which may not always be the case. 

Task for Thing 14 

Use Meet-O-Matic to set up a meeting with colleagues to share your experiences of exploring some of the 19Things.
If you are the only person in your library participating, invite colleagues to a meeting to demonstrate one or two of the 19Things you’ve been exploring.

On the Meet-O-Matic page enter your Meeting name ( include a time if you wish)  and your Email address.
Select the days you can offer for the meeting and Click on Go

Meet-O-Matic will email you with one Web address for you to forward to your invitees and another Web address for you to keep track of the progress of responses. Meet-O-Matic also emails you every time a fresh individual response has been received, i.e. whenever someone fills in and submits the response form.

Remember to email your invitees with confirmation of the date that is best for most people.

Hope you have useful meeting!

Extra things you might like to Explore:

We have asked you to explore Meet-O-Matic as it is accessible on NHS Network PCs.

Doodle is similar scheduling tool. Doodle allows you to offer meetings at specific times (You need to subscribe to Meet-O-Matic to be able to use this feature.)

Using Meet-O-Matic  is all about helping with time management. If you’re feeling really keen have a look at JISC’s infokit on time management. 

 

Thing 13: Reflection week

Spend some time this week:

Writing your thoughts and experiences on some of the recent "Things" you’ve explored. If you’ve created a blog, publish your reflections as a new post.

Exploring one or two of Things 1-12 that you haven’t got round to looking at yet. If you would like to create a blog but need one-to-one help, email tvwlibrarians@gmail.com and one of the team will contact you.

Reading some of the Participants' Blogs .  If you've created a blog yourself, try adding a comment to another participants' blog.

Thing 12: Adding a Pubmed search alert to My Library

After completing Thing 12, you will have:

-done a simple search on PubMed, and set up an alert on My Library which will inform you of new relevant articles as they are indexed.

Why don’t I just set up an alert direct via PubMed?

·         Using My Library will mean that all updates from your favourite feeds and your PubMed alerts will come in the one email. 

Part one: doing the search

Firstly, go to the PubMed homepage:

www.pubmed.gov

We are going to use three search lines when setting up our alert, so click on the ‘Advanced’ search link: 

We are interested in finding anything that discusses

• information skills
• or information literacy
• in a health environment.   

So that’s (‘information skills’ OR ‘information literacy’) AND health

 We’re not going to use MESH headings, but we are going to use the indexing list.

In the first search box, type information skills then click ‘Show indexing list’ – the list of indexing terms will be displayed.

BEWARE!!!

this is not the same as a thesaurus function; it just lets us jump into the (alphabetical) indexing list at this particular point.  We are going to have to look elsewhere if we want to add related terms

 Use the Ctrl key and the mouse to select information skills, information skills instruction, and information skills training – note that they are automatically added to the first line of the PubMed Advanced Search Builder using the Boolean operator ‘OR’.

Click ‘Hide index list’ to clean the page up a bit, then go to the next search box; we are going to search for information literacy as a related term;

• Use the drop down menu to change the operator from “AND” to ‘OR’  and type information literacy into the search box 

Display the indexing list for our second line, and using the Ctrl key and mouse again select information literacy, information literacy education, information literacy instruction, and information literacy skills (you will need to scroll down the list a little for this one...

Click ‘Hide index list’ to clean the page up a bit, then go to the next search box

Lastly, type in the third part of our search – health.  No need to change the ‘AND’ as the Boolean operator when adding the line this time. 

Then click the Search button...

We have a lot of hits (222 on the day of writing this!) but don’t worry –we’re setting this up to receive updates, not to go through everything that’s already there in PubMed.

Part two: adding the RSS feed to My Library

Click on the RSS icon at the top of the screen; you’ll get a display box like this:

• Set the number of items to be displayed (15 is the default) and
• don’t worry about naming it – you’ll be doing that in My Library
• Then click the ‘Create RSS’ button.

You get a second display box that looks like this:

• Click on the orange XML button , then copy the URL of the feed
• Go to My Library; click the blue ‘Add feed’ button
• Paste the URL into the box
• Give it a name that will remind you what the search was about
• Then click ‘Add feed’ underneath the URL box, just like we did with the RSS feeds we added in the last post 

You will now get your updates as part of your My Library email! 

! TIP: Remember we set a number of hits we wanted to see in our update?  My Library only shows the first few by default, but clicking on ‘List all’ when logged in to My Library will show you the number that you asked for...

Thing 11: Adding RSS feeds to NHS My Library

After completing Thing 11, you will have:

practised using  NHS My Library as an RSS feed reader

Why use My Library as a feed reader when I’ve just set up ProtoPage?

Because: 

• My Library will save you a little bit of time, and will make it even easier to find new content from your feeds.
• It emails you to show you the latest updates from your RSS feeds; you can click on the link to the new content directly from the email.
• We can show our readers how to set up RSS feeds to MyLibrary.

Step-by-step instructions:

·         Go to www.evidence.nhs.uk ; click on the ‘Journals and databases’ tab.

·         Click on ‘Sign-in to NHS Athens’ and enter your Athens login and password.

·         Scroll down the page, on the left under the heading ‘Your Health Information Resources’ you will find the link:

My Library – access your links, alerts and library information
Click on the link to open the page

Now we can start adding our chosen feeds. 

ProTip:  Ignore the invitation to ‘Select your favourite updates from our feeds library’ as it does not work .

·         Open another browser window and find the site you are interested in.  I’m using this as an example – it’s a really interesting blog by library marketing guru Ned Potter, a subject librarian from York University.

http://thewikiman.org/blog/

·         
 There is a little orange RSS icon on the right-hand side 

fof the page, where it says ‘Subscribe’;
hover over it with your cursor, and you will see this:

·         My Library isn’t one of the feed readers listed in the box, but that doesn’t matter; just click on the top left-hand link – the one which says ‘Feed’.

·         This will give you the URL for the blog feed – copy this from the address bar at the top of the screen.

·         Back in your My Library window, click on the  Add feed button; paste the URL you have just copied into the box, and give the feed a name, like this:

Click the ‘Add Feed’ link under the URL box and you will get a message saying that your feed has been successfully added to My Library.

You can then tell My Library how often you would like to receive an update email, and where to send it to:

Here are some more feeds for you to practice with - some are health library type ones for resources which might help with your own CPD; others are feeds to which we might like to suggest to some of our readers:

Health Information and Libraries Journal – this will give you a ‘table of contents’ feed;

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1471-1842

-       Click on the ‘Get RSS feed’ link on the left-hand side of the screen; copy the URL of the feed and add it to your My Library feeds.

Behind the Headlines – a discussion, via NHS Choices, of the evidence behind health related news stories. 

http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx

-       Look for the RSS link on the left; copy the URL and add to your My Library feeds.

The Learning Disabilities Elf – a good current awareness feed for healthcare staff working with people with learning disabilities:

http://www.thelearningdisabilitieself.net/

-       Look for the RSS icon on the right-hand side. Don’t worry that the screen just shows a load of code when you click the icon – copy the URL, add it to your My Library feeds and your updates will read just as they do on the LD Elf home page.  Trust me J

The RCN news feeds - a range of national, regional and subject-specific nursing feeds.

http://www.rcn.org.uk/

-       Look for the RSS icon on the right-hand side; once you have clicked it, you can choose which feed(s) you want

Thing 10: Adding RSS feeds to Protopage

As well as being able to add widgets to your Protopage you can also add news feeds.

News feeds are generally known as RSS ('Really Simple Syndication') feeds which are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people. News feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines or journal tables of contents in one place, as soon as they're published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.

To identify whether a website has an RSS feed look for the icon:

Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.

To add the newsfeed for the 19thingsTVW blog to your Protopage go to

http://19thingstvw.blogspot.co.uk/

On the left hand side you will see the RSS symbol next to some drop down menu boxes

Click on one of the drop down arrows to subscribe to new posts or new comments.

From the drop down menu click on  Atom. 

A page of computer readable code will open. Ignore the content of the page and copy the URL from the address bar.

Now return to your Protopage page and click on Add Widget.

In the pop-up menu underneath where it says "Add a news feed directly" there is an address bar. Paste in the address you have just copied and click on "Go".

The news feed from the 19ThingsTVW blog should appear in a widget, ready to be dragged onto your page.

If the widget can't find the feed just drag it onto your page anyway. Then click on the "Edit" button at top right and paste the address into the first line under "Multiple news feed configuration" then click "Save". 

You can also edit the Title, Heading colour and how the feed is displayed.

Now see if you can do the same thing with a journal of interest to you or your readers. It can be one you access via My Journals or you might want to take a feed straight from the publisher's website. 

Once you've added the feed try clicking on the links to see how they work.

Finally, blog about the experience of creating a start page. Can you see the usefulness of one? Some commentators think they have had their day - what do you think?

Thing 9: Creating a Protopage page

Below you will find step by step instructions to creating a Protopage start page. If you would prefer you are welcome to try out any of the other start pages you have come across instead.

 Go to www.protopage.com

Your first impression will probably be of something very messy. Don’t worry. it will look fine when you've tidied it up.

 .

Protopage initial start page

Register your page and choose a name for it by clicking on the link at top left and completing the form. You will need to respond to an activation e-mail so choose an email address you can access. You will also need to decide if you want your page public or private. You can always change this later.

Now delete most or all of the existing widgets and ads by clicking the X button in their top right corners. Unfortunately the ads do come back when you move away from the page but they are fairly unobtrusive. 

You will end up with a page which looks something like this:

Now for the fun part.

Have a look at the Colors/Settings tab and choose which colours and wallpaper you like.

Practice adding an extra tab by clicking on the New Tab tab. Give the tab a name by clicking in the box and  typing then choose a colour and layout for the tab by clicking on the dropdown menu.

When you are happy with the colours and layout add some widgets to the page.

To see the list of available widgets, click the 'Add widgets' button at the top of the page then select a widget from the pop-up menu or click on "Explore the Widget Showcase" to see more. When you select a widget from the pop-up menu you will need to drag it onto your page.
NB: For this Thing please select Widgets from the bottom half of the menu rather than adding feeds in the top part of the menu. We will look at adding RSS feeds in the next Thing

Widgets are arranged into columns according to how you have set up your tab options. You can drag and drop them to re-arrange them by clicking and dragging the title bar. You can also resize them by dragging the corner.


Some widgets have settings that you can edit. For example, a weather widget will let you choose your city by clicking 'edit'.

Experiment with the different widgets. For example you can add sticky notes on your page. To edit the text, simply click inside the widget and start typing. You can also add to-do lists, calendars, photos, and much more. Be sure to try out the Protopuppy widget


If you decide a widget is no longer wanted you can remove it by clicking the 'x' button as we did to get a clear page to start with.

RBH Protopage

The picture above show the Royal Berkshire Hospital Library's Protopage  with some handy widgets which is under development as an alternative to Netvibes. How does your page compare?

Thing 8: Protopage - what is it?

Protopage is an internet start page. You can use it as your own personal home page which you can access from any computer or mobile phone or you can make it public and share it with other people. If you made it public you could create a customised start page which would signpost  library users to the most relevant and reliable content on the web 

Signpost
photo by JMC Photos on Flickr
used under a Creative Commons licence

You can use a start page to bring together current awareness services such as journal tables of contents, search alerts, web pages, RSS feeds and other web content. You can include feeds from Twitter and other social networking sites (but these will probably not work inside the NHS) .

You can also add widgets which do a range of things from adding a cute puppy to your page to generating a quote for the day.

There are some other start pages which you could use if you prefer.  

For example Netvibes is very popular with healthcare libraries but does not work well with IE6 or 7. For the practical element of this Thing we will be providing step by step instructions for setting up a Protopage which does work with NHS standard browsers. 

For an idea of how Protopage can be used in a library context have a look at what South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust library services have done with their page:

http://www.protopage.com/southteeslibraries

They have a readers guide here:

http://southtees.nhs.uk/content/uploads/Guide-to-using-Protopage.pdf

To have a look at some start pages using different platforms check out the NHS Library Web Portals directory, set up by Catherine Ebenezer from Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, 

Now blog about which start page you have decided to use and if you can think of any ways in which you could use it for yourself or your library service