Let's explore the post-Civil War Lit class.

The bulk of the interaction between students and the VL would take place in the discussion area of the Web CT? course.

Instructors were given directions on how to add the VL topic to their classes, and were prompted to do so at the beginning of the course.

Let's check out the discussion area now.

Discussion postings from the librarian would cover a number of topics. There were some canned messages that we would use in all of our classes. For example, let's look at the Welcome message.

The Welcome message introduced students to the idea of the VL program, and to what they could expect over the course of the semester. Scroll down a bit to see the rest of the message.

The messages would have live links in them, as well, that connect the student to valuable library related information. Here, you see hours, locations and contact information links.

Go ahead and click on the x to close this window.

Some of the messages sent were more instructional in nature, and pointed students to specific groups of resources. Let's look at one of the messages sent later in the semester. Scroll down...

Let's check out the posting on helping students find the HCC library databases.

This posting pointed students to our substantial collection of subscription databases, and explained to them what kinds of information they were likely to find in them.

Scroll down to see more.

Not only would this posting direct students to the material, but it also pointed them to valuable tutorials and tips on how to use the databases available to them.

A separate posting explained to students what they would need to access these materials from off-campus.

Go ahead and close out of this window using the x in the upper right hand corner.

The discussion board also allowed students the opportunity to ask questions of the VL. Sometimes students would reply to our postings, but they also sometimes initiated threads. Let's look at the posting titled "Going to Meet the Man."

Here, a student asked the VL to point him in the right direction to find crticism on a particular short story.

Scroll down to see the rest of the response.

The librarian could take this opportunity to provide point-of-need instruction, explaining to students which databases are best for a particular search & how to use particular search interfaces. Linking students directly to the information they need, right when they need it is one of the greatest benefits of the VL program!

Go ahead and close out this window.

Students could also utilize Web CT?'s mail feature to send direct requests to librarians. Let's look at the mailbox now.

Here we see an email from a student about accessing the Library. Let's open that up.

The student expressed her need for assistance, and offered her phone number (blacked out) as a best contact. The librarian then was able to assist the student!

From its inception through the spring of 2005, the Virtual Library Program has been funded by a national grant, which has been offered, in part, according to the HCCS Title V Web page, for the purpose of “increasing student access to information resources” through the use of technology. Despite the overwhelming popularity of the program, its very existence has been threatened repeatedly due to the ephemeral nature of grant funding. Though V Ls ? participate on a volunteer basis, they are offered, through the grant, the incentive of extra pay based on the number of classes they serve. Though funding has been available each semester since the program began, there have been several suspenseful semesters when funding issues were not settled until just a few weeks before the point when HCCS would typically advertise the availability of V Ls ? . Luckily, the money came through each time. But these close calls lead one to wonder how many librarians would participate without the prospect of extra pay, especially since most V Ls ? are spread thin as they struggle to keep up with the needs of on-site students at busy campus libraries.

In light of the problems just mentioned, the feasibility of the VL program was also undermined by its own success (view stats). The steadily increasing popularity raised the question: "how will we keep up with demand"? With the number of volunteers who were willing to join the program maxed out, the program began to crumble under its own weight.

Consolidating efforts:

The Virtual Library Program was straining under the weight of it's own success. We were looking for a more efficient way to deliver pertinent info. to students than constantly duplicating each others' work. Soon, it occurred to us that instead of having multiple broadcasters conveying similar messages, we could consolidate our efforts by broadcasting information from one source to many recipients, via RSS. We'll explain how we accomplished that in a few minutes.

Really Simple Syndication overview: Newspaper analogy: Associated Press is a syndicated news service. Articles published by AP appear in newspapers all over the country. RSS-delivered information is syndicated electronically in a similar manner: content posted to one website can be imported by RSS-enabled sites all over the Web, just the way that an AP story would appear in many newspapers.

"Radio RSS": broadcasting and receiving To use another analogy, RSS is used to deliver information over the web in the form of articles, posts, or headlines/titles via a feed or "channel." The concept behind this is similar to radio broadcasting. This channel is a relationship between one website and an infinite number of others. We can think of the site originating the content as a "broadcaster," and the infinite number of other sites as "receivers."

Examples of RSS-enabled sites: (flash tour)

Lib Line: Lib Line, the HCCS library blog, is used to deliver updates, library news, or research tips to HCC students, faculty/staff, and community. Posts appear in reverse-chronological order on the page. Users could receive the latest posts in three ways: they could visit the page, they could use an aggregator to import the posts, or they could sign up to have the posts delivered via email.

My MSN: The mymsn.com portal page can be thought of as a "receiver." The user chooses news stories, weather forecasts, and other RSS feeds to be arranged on the portal page. This information refreshes automatically, as portals retrieve and publish the most recent feeds.

Bloglines: An aggregator is set up by the user to do exactly as its name suggests: to aggregate or accumulate content that is delivered via RSS feeds. Think of it as a table of contents offering links to news articles and blog posts on your favorite topics. This table of contents is constantly refreshing the information, adding posts or articles that are published by RSS-enabled sites.