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Amber Toland: Welcome to this Library Connect podcast. I'm Amber Toland,
Library Connect marketing intern, and I'm here with Susannah
Megow, who is the online training manager here at Elsevier and,
also, the editor for TrainingDesk. Susannah, could you first tell us
a little bit about what the TrainingDesk is?
Susannah Megow: Sure, the TrainingDesk is a free program for our customers that's
designed to allow customers to explore different products and
services. Our publishing tools and resources will help them to
master our content, whether they are just getting started with a new
product or they've mastered a new product, and they're looking to
gain more, or use it for training for other people, as well.
Amber Toland: Okay, and could you give us an example of the sorts of trainings
that somebody might find when they go on TrainingDesk?
Susannah Megow: Yes. On the TrainingDesk, you'll find both online live sessions that
you can attend, and, also, we feature tutorials, recorded sessions
that people can download on their own time and watch when they
have time to watch and learn. We have regular programs or
training sessions that are offered, such as Getting Started with
Scopus and ScienceDirect, that you can look at the calendar and
choose a time to attend and connect with a live expert and ask
questions directly, or we have a whole list of different materials.
We have presentations that you can share with training, with end
users, people that you need trained, as well as recorded sessions
and tutorials on different products and services.
Amber Toland: Okay. It all sounds very useful. And I know TrainingDesk has
recently had a facelift. So you could tell us about maybe some of
the new features.
Susannah Megow: Yes, sure. The TrainingDesk is now a much more dynamic
program. So all the material you find on TrainingDesk is live, and
it's updated daily. We feature a blog that has different tips and
tricks or useful information about different tools and services that
we have, such as ScienceDirect, top/hottest articles, how you set
things up, like HTML feeds, things like that. And then we have a
calendar of things that you can sign up for and learn more about
when we have live sessions offered, as well as the ability to rate
material and to comment on materials, so that you can go in there
and actually contribute your ideas and your thoughts and feedback
on the TrainingDesk to really help us to gear how you want what
kind of training materials and what you want more of and what you want less of.
Amber Toland: Okay, and for the sorts of trainings or other materials that are
coming, could you give us maybe a little picture of what is in the
plans for TrainingDesk?
Susannah Megow: Sure. We're going to feature more RSS-type of materials, so you
can really tailor alerts to feature what you want, not just about live
sessions, but actual, specific content or subject area that you want
to have training in. One of the things that we're really looking
forward to is featuring user-contributed training. So the customer
really is the best guide for knowing how to use our products and
how they want to use our products. So if the customer has training
that they've developed themselves, we are really interested in
featuring that on the TrainingDesk, as well. So that's something
that we're really looking forward to, is finding that material and
putting it on TrainingDesk and connecting colleagues to colleagues
on how to best train ScienceDirect at your library or how to use
Scopus for graduate students, and different programs like that.
Amber Toland: Okay. If one of our viewers would like to contribute, how can they
contribute to the TrainingDesk?
Susannah Megow: In different ways. You can always contact me, Susannah, at the
TrainingDesk at Elsevier.com just by e-mail, or you can go on the
site and actually look around the different features that we have.
You can comment on things. You can also leave your URL for
your training.
Amber Toland: Okay. Very well. Thank you for talking with us, Susannah, and
telling us a little bit more about the TrainingDesk, and thank you
for listening. This has been a Library Connect podcast.