#CPD23 Thing 13: Tools for Collaboration

I am so excited for this post - in part because it cannot come at a more opportune time than this! There are several projects and committees that I am a part of with other librarian colleagues cross-campus. Because we are not physically in the same city, we rely heavily on chat and e-mail for communication. Sometimes it becomes difficult, but we're making strides to continue finding new ways to better collaborate with each other.

I have had the opportunity to work with a fantastic group of librarians to co-lead an APA revision committee. Without getting too detailed in the "why" of the committee (it's a bit of a long story, and one I'm happy to share if you ask), just know that there were many many painstakingly long hours/days/weeks/months that we poured over our campus documents - tweaking them to be more user friendly and in line with APA 6th edition style. We also launched a brand spanking new APA Research Guide that I am super duper bodaciously proud of. There is still one more legal resources are that we're tweaking, but it's complete and will be launched to the information literacy courses next week.

I saw all of this background info to give you a picture of how online collaborative tools could have helped us along this process. My co-leader and I did get creative with screenshot links sent via chat by way of Jing (I just love Jing!), but when working on the paper documents, it would have been interesting to see how well Google Docs could have worked - or even drop box for that matter.

I have, however, had the opportunity to suggest Google Docs to a newly formed Research Society (The sexy librarian research society to be exact) that a select few librarians from various campuses in my organization are a part of. We're hoping to use Google Docs for suggestions and revisions of publication material, and potentially Zotero for group article source collaboration.

So now that you have some background of where I'm coming from...I'll get right to the specifics of the tools being discussed for this week's Thing 13 as part of the 23 Things for Professional Development program.

Google Docs
I have been an avid Google Docs user for quite some time. Oftentimes, a flashdrive just takes to long to locate or pop into a computer, and Google Docs allows me to keep my documents handy on any computer, at any time, and it also syncs to my droid phone! My husband has collaborated on a resume document with me too and it worked extremely well! I was able to see, real time, his edits, making it a much faster process than e-mailing the same document back and forth umpteen gazillion times.

Some people are leery of cloud computing and privacy - and that's a valid argument. I just like the convenience of having my documents readily available. And not all documents are uploaded or created in Google Docs... but I do keep my information literacy course material handy, as well as a few other work documents.

The following video does a great job of showing the basics of getting started with Google Docs:

Dropbox
I have used dropbox off and on for a while now too. Recently, it has been super useful when transferring documents between work and home. It's a simple drag and drop to dropbox, it syncs with ease, and when I get home...my document appears like magic!


One aspect of dropbox that I haven't tried is the sharing feature of folders for collaboration purposes. I have however noticed the individual file link that has come in handy a few times.... but for the most part, I have used dropbox as a personal tool.

Wikis
The last portion of Thing 13 talks about wikis. I must say...I'm not a huge fan of wikis. I find them to be somewhat clunky, and the hierarchy of how the information is inputted doesn't make sense to me. I would much rather use Google Sites as a website and archive for documents and information. Google Sites also has a wiki template that works well.  I have however edited an existing wiki with ease... but I have nearly pulled my hair out when trying to create one from scratch. I'd rather code a website (lol).

In conclusion, if you can't tell... I am a huge fan of Google Docs, and it will most likely continue to be my number 1 go-to source for collaboration purposes.

Stay tuned for Thing 14 ...