Excel+for+Librarians

=Using Excel in the School Library=

Excel is able to provide many opportunities for creating, organizing, storing, and sharing information and data. Microsoft.com has templates available that might suit your needs or inspire you to create your own.

The following is an example of an Agenda for a school library meeting.



The next example is of budget expenses.



If you are intimidated by Excel and the appearance of the blank spreadsheet page with all of the empty cells, kick off your experience with a tutorial. By completing a tutorial, you will build confidence, see examples, and learn ways that you can manipulate Excel to your benefit. You will begin to realize the potential of utilizing such a powerful tool! So, let's begin.

To get started with Excel, you might want to try one of these tutorials. There are many that are available to help you, but here are a few that I have found useful.
[|Baycongroup.com] has a clean tutorial that provides the basics of Excel XP with great graphics. [|GetIT] is another tutorial that is crisp and easy to follow for Excel 2003. GetIT stands for Gaining Experience Teaching with Instructional Technology from the Rutgers Writing Program. [|Learnthat.com] has a tutorial for the XP version of Excel. It has a lot of graphics to help you understand the layout of land, so to speak. [|Internet4Classrooms] has a decent explanation for using formulas, plus additional information concerning Excel broken out into nice chunks. The site also has templates that might be of interest and of use to you. [|Microsoft.com] has their own training courses that you might find very useful. [|Florida Gulf Coast University] has a section on adding graphics to Excel 2000. [|Brad James] has created a tutorial with a quiz at the end if you want to check you learning.

For the 2007 version of Microsoft Excel: Cronan, John. (2007). //Microsoft Office Excel 2007: Quick Steps.// New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN: 978-0-07-226372-5
 * If you feel that you want a text to supplement your learning, I suggest: **