Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Using Social Media to Promote Digital Photos with ATLAS

"Welcome to ATLAS! Using Social Media to Promote Digital Photos"
Alliance Library System(ALS) and LearningTimes are pleased to announce an online conference to debut ATLAS, a new set of social media tools to promote history and digital photographs. The conference will be held online using Adobe Connect.

Date & Time: Monday June 29 from 9:00 A.M. – 11:00 A.M (12 am to 2pm eastern time).

There is no charge for this exciting conference. Register below. ATLAS (Alliance’s Trail to Learning-Casts and Syndicated Sites) is a new set of social media tools ALS is using to promote information and photographs about Illinois history. ATLAS features a podmap of Illinois where the user can click on a city or geographic area to see what information is available. One of the sites for Peoria contains a videocast, podcast, and text about Lydia Bradley, the founder of Bradley University. A user can enjoy the video and audio on a computer or download to a handheld device. The products will also be available on I-tunes and users can subscribe to the topics of interest to them. In addition to the podmap, there will be an online community around the podmap for users to contribute resources, comments, and experiences. Learning Times is also using this technology with the Smithsonian Museum and the National Air Force Museum.

Register at http://www.learningtimes.net/atlas

Introductions – Kitty Pope, ALS Executive Director ATLAS project/background/history – Lori Bell, ALS Director of Innovation Meet Albert Cashier, one of the historical figures on ATLAS – Angie Green, ALS Library Development Consultant Meet Lydia Bradley on ATLAS – Valerie Brandon, ALS Innovation Administrator Podcast training – Jonathan Finkelstein, Learning Times

Introduction to and overview of ATLAS – John Walber, Learning Times Project evaluation – Tom Peters, TAP Information Services, and Eric Questions – all “We are thrilled to introduce this exciting new tool to the library community and we hope Illinois libraries will participate to make information available statewide.” -- Kitty Pope, ALS Executive Director.“We think this will begin a new trend in digital imaging sites and collections to make them more interactive using these exciting social media tools.” -- John Walber, LearningTimes

For more information on the project, please contact Lori Bell at lbell@alliancelibrarysystem.com or 309-694-9200 ext. 2128. This project was funded by an LSTA grant from the Illinois State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.