"Whether you Think You Can..."

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t - you’re right.”

Henry Ford

Using the My Tools Features in ASTM Compass My next on-demand video tutorial, Using the My Tools Features in ASTM Compass, was approved and I uploaded it to our LibGuides. The platform was experiencing some technical issues but I decided just to delete the parts describing the features so that the entire video didn’t have to wait for the changes. Once I receive an email from their technical support that the feature is working as it should, I’ll go in and add them to the already created video. 

Rare Book Virtual Exhibit Meeting This week my boss, my co-worker, and I met for a follow-up meeting regarding the virtual rare book exhibit. We discussed general thoughts and a basic outline on the exhibit. 

Rare Book Virtual Exhibit This week I started designing the Rare Book Virtual Exhibit based on our meeting. I originally started creating it in PowerPoint but don’t like the fact that you can’t keep items from moving by locking them into place. So then, I started working in Illustrator, but as I don’t have a legitimate background in design work, I think I’m missing a key component. Namely that the photos of our rare books are HUGE. We’re talking 3000-4000 pixels, so when I imported them into Illustrator, I was having a hard time actually working in the program. Things were really starting to lag. This is something that I’ll have to Google and look into further. There is no way that all these major designers have issues working with high-res photos. I’m hoping that there is a way for the software itself to just use a smaller version of the photos without me actually having to do the work of editing them myself. 

So anyway, I ended up using Canva. I figured I’d let the platform do all the work of compressing the high-res photos. Which worked well. Well, the photo part worked well. For some reason, the text gets all screwy anytime I make anything italicized. However, if needed, I can work around that by just downloading the slides as a PDF without text and then adding the text in InDesign. With a rough draft done, I set a meeting to reconnect with my boss and my co-worker next week so we can talk comments, suggestions, and critiques. 

Quarterly Library Meeting This was the first quarterly library meeting I’ve attended since I started. I have met the Director on campus before the meeting but I had never met the Assistant Director so it was nice to put a face to a name. The meeting was just a quick overview of what the library accomplished in the fiscal year. Much like our weekly library meetings, we each went round-robin giving highlights on the work we’ve been doing in our area.