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Come to our monthly 30-minute webinars focused on topics from the Cookbooks and designed to get you started on a project today. September's topic: Public Computers and 2.0 Tools with Robin Hastings from the Missouri River Regional Library. If you missed one, all webinars are archived on WebJunction.
Tell us about your daily routine maintaining public computers, or a moment when you were particularly proud. Don't forget that what might be "that's nothing" to you may be an "aha!" to someone else!
Visit TechSoup to find donated and discounted software and technology products for your library.
learning about technology and software
When it comes to new software, I always avoid the user manuals, How-To books and resources, and other such tools until after I've grabbed the software (or whatever the technology is, such as a handheld device, etc.), installed it, and fired it up.
I use stuff to learn about it. I was to see how solid it is. In all my years of using computers and other tech toys (going back to 1978), I've never read a manual prior to using anything. Only one piece of software was so un-intuitive that I had to refer to the manual to figure out how to do anything with it! Yes, despite having to turn to the manual to even begin using the software, I did give it a fair trial, and in the end, no, it wasn't adopted.
A well-developed piece of software or other technological gizmo, whether a handheld device (phone, tablet, etc.), or anything else, should be designed so it's user-friendly. Basically, if it isn't intuitive, the design is all wrong.