Thing 8: Calendar

Low tech calendar by Tee Poole via CC license on Flickr

Our lives are all so busy, not just our own schedules, but keeping of everyone in your family as well.  I moved to Google Calendar quite a few years ago, after recognising the value of being able to access my calendar from anywhere. Since then, my family has added their own schedules and now my calendar is a composite of many.  There is mine, my kids, my husbands and the events of my favourite groups, all together in the one interface.  My only problems was remembering to check it!.

As with many of our users, I now carry my calendar in my pocket too, so that I can check my schedule at any time, receive alerts for appointments that I might have otherwise forgotten and can share appointments with others as appropriate. I am an organised person generally, but I don’t know where I would be without my online calendar.

My library also utilises a Google calendar, to aggregate, display and share our calendars with our library clients in a number of different ways.

DISCOVER:

• Check out the calendar feature on your mobile device.  Try setting an appointment with an alert to remind you 10 minutes before it is due.
• Do you already use a Gmail calendar or perhaps you use Outlook and have your appointments synched?
• What sort of calendar of events do you have on your library website?  How does it look when viewed through a mobile device?  If you don’t have a calendar of events try visiting some of these: Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library,   The Grove Library,  Vancouver Public Library,   City of Sydney Library Network,   Auckland Libraries.

EXPLORE:

• iCalendar,  often referred to as iCal, is an internet calendar format that enables users to create and share electronic calendars across different computers and devices.
• There are tools like iCalShare that allow you to create a calendar of events that can be shared to different types of calendars.
• Google Hangouts can be integrated into a Google calendar
• See more links on our Pinterest board.

THINKING POINTS:

• Are events advertised on your website with an option to download the calendar details?
• Perhaps if your library hours have seasonal variations you could provide a Gmail calendar or iCal file of dates and hours that clients could import into their own calendar?
• Study room bookings – could your library allow customers to import them directly into their own calendars?
• Can your library clients sign up for a series of events (eg. a book club, early literacy story times, a technology course, etc.) and capture the details easily into their own calendars?
• How else could your library utilise online calendars to share information?

CAPTION CONTEST

This week we thought we might have a bit of fun with a Flickr caption contest! Keep an eye out on the blog, Twitter, and Facebook page as we will put out the photo(s) for you to caption soon…

The winner gets bragging rights, so put your thinking caps on and may the best librarian win!

From Abigail: That fantastic introduction was written by @michellemclean. Keep an eye out for the weekly e-mail and the photo(s) for you to caption.

This post is a remix of 23mobilethings.net Thing 8.