Google Calendar

Google Calendar is new to me, but using the Cam23 instructions I found it very easy to set up and use. I think it would be clearer if all the hours of the day could fit on one screen, rather than needing to scroll up and down in order to view the whole day, but apart from that little quibble I think it works very well. I actually prefer the way the calendar is displayed on my iGoogle page rather than on the site itself. I'm a real list person, and much prefer that format to the chart, where I find things are a bit all over the place.

My Google Calendar on my iGoogle page - in list format, hooray!

While adding events to my calendar, I noticed the 'Other Calendars' on the left bar of the screen. Here were tabs for the weather (yes how could I resist yet another place to check out the latest forecast), UK Holidays (very useful), and, one that I found more surprising, Trainee Calendar (all different colours which I very much approved off). Yes, I thought to myself, I am a Library Trainee, but surely that's not what that tab means, because how could it know that? It wasn't until I'd added my calendar to iGoogle, and found my much-favoured events list, that I discovered that Google had added in all by itself one of my trainee visits that I had completely forgotten about. After being astounded for a few seconds I remembered that one of my fellow trainees had created a Google Group for us all a few months ago, which I had joined, and had added a Google Calendar for all our visits and events. And using the same log in details, Google had identified me to be the same person, and automatically connected the two calendars. Scarily clever!!!

As for Google Calendar's potential for libraries, I think they would be great on a library website to promote library events, and to inform users about end of term borrowing arrangements, vacation borrowing, changes to opening and closing times etc. Although I'm sure we wouldn't discard our library posters and notices, an online calendar would provide another point of reference, usefully available 24 hours a day.