Electronic resources reviews
Google Calendar. Google, 1600
Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain
View, CA 94043; 650.253.0000; fax,
650.253.0001; http://www.google
.com/calendar/;
free
online
calendar.
General description
Google Calendar is an easy-to-use,
free online calendar for personal use
or workplace use, such as listing
library events and classes, coordinating meetings and events with colleagues during conferences, or
scheduling work shifts for residents
at a hospital or librarians at the
reference desk. This handy program
also alerts users of upcoming calendar events as early as a week ahead
to just five minutes before via email,
pop-up reminders on the calendar,
and/or cell phone text short message
service (SMS). Users can easily add
more calendars to their own calendars; additional personal calendars;
coworkers and friends’ calendars;
holiday calendars (including official
holidays from various nations and
religions); public calendars of sporting, musical, and other events; and
assorted calendars marking moon
phases and other events. These calendars can be color coded with
numerous different colors and are
searchable. Some people are foregoing online invitation software, such as
Evite, and using their Google Calendar to send out event invitations, as
anyone who has an email address can
view, respond, and include a comment in their responses.
Intended audience
Google Calendar is for anyone needing the convenience of an online
calendar that can be shared, accessed, and modified by a single
user, invited users in a group, or the
public.
Major features
Google Calendar is a versatile and
visually appealing application that
makes scheduling appointments,
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meetings, and other events simple
to do. When sharing their calendars
with other individuals, calendar creators can set viewing, editing, and
sharing privileges. Calendars can be
set to automatically accept all appointments or only accept those
appointments that do not conflict.
Individual events in shared calendars can be set as ‘‘Private,’’ which
provides no details and only allows
others to see the marked-off time as
busy. The calendar can also be
shared with non-Google Calendar
users by creating a uniform resource
locator (URL) they can click on or
subscribe to via a feed reader.
To use Google Calendar for staff
scheduling, users need to create a
master or resource calendar and
other staff members need to create
personal calendar accounts. Using
the Manage Calendar option, the
master calendar and the individual
calendars are shared. The creator of
the master calendar can set permissions on what each person can do to
the master calendar, such as viewonly, edit, or edit and share. Likewise, other users can set permissions
for their calendars. It is a good idea
to look at and agree on individual
calendar colors as a group. Individuals should choose a unique color for
their calendar, so a quick glance at
the schedule is all that is needed to
see who is on the reference desk
when. Also, a mini-calendar is always displayed to the left of the
master calendar, and bolded dates
indicate events.
Calendar events can be created by
using the Create an Event or Quick
Add links or by clicking directly on a
time and day on the calendar. Fields
include what, when, recurrence (every third Wednesday, monthly, annually, etc.—click in the When section for this), where, event calendar
(to move it to another calendar),
description, comment, and even a
Google Map link. A More Actions
drop-down box gives users the option to duplicate the event or copy it
to another user’s calendar. Or one
can drag and drop the event to move
it to another day and/or time.
Calendar Settings offers many
options, such as language, country,
time zone (handy when going to
conferences), time format (standard
and military), date format (12/31/
2008, 31/12/2008, 2008-12-31), weather icons based on geographic location, and much more.
With a few steps, users can sync
their Google and Microsoft Outlook
calendars. Google Calendar offers
two-way syncing with BlackBerry
and can be used with other advanced cell phone and handheld
devices. Users can import events
from Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal,
Yahoo!, and any other online calendar that allows events to be converted into CSV or iCal format. Google
Calendar can only be viewed while
online; however, users can save the
file to their computer or export it to a
third-party offline calendar program.
Only US users can create or view
their events (the latter within a
twenty-four-hour period in the
Agenda view) by text messaging
GVENT (48368). However, users
cannot edit or delete events. Unless
they use a pre-paid cell phone, users
worldwide can receive SMS event
reminders.
Users can view their Google Calendars via a mobile phone’s browser. When setting up Google Calendar, users can choose from twentyfour languages, and the calendar will
be displayed in that language when
it is viewed from a mobile phone’s
browser.
Librarians can also mount the
calendar on the library’s website to
promote events and classes to the
public. Web editors or programmers
can utilize advanced applications
like Google application programming interface (API) ,http://www
.code.google.com/apis/calendar/.
to create and enable additional functions. Users can add their Google
Calendars to their iGoogle page and
their Google Desktop Sidebar and/or
add it as a link to their Internet
Explorer Links toolbar or Google
Toolbar. Doing this will enable more
conveniences and features.
Usability
Google Calendar is compatible with
most of the major Apple and PC
browsers. The browsers’ text size
option allows users to enlarge the
font size for better viewing. Users
can click anywhere on an item to
activate it or access it, instead of
J Med Libr Assoc 96(4) October 2008
Electronic resources reviews
being forced to click on small target
areas or checkboxes. Google Calendar offers seventy background colors
and twenty-one personal calendar
colors, which make the calendar
easier to scan through. The current
day is automatically highlighted,
although in an anemic, pale yellow.
Google Calendar offers auto-complete of email addresses, a nice
convenience when inviting the same
guests (or contacts from one’s Gmail
account) to calendar events. The
Help file is available in twenty-three
languages. Google offers simple keyboard shortcuts (press the letter c to
create an event, press the letter w for
the week view, etc.) for those who
dislike or have difficulty using a
mouse. Google Calendar has been
successfully used by the reviewer’s
reference department since November 2007. The basics of the program
took staff about fifteen minutes to
learn.
Features
& Cost: Google Calendar is free;
however, SMS (text message) reminders on cell phones might accrue text
messaging charges. Users should
check with their cell phone plan.
& Basic technical requirements: Users need a Google Account; sign up
for one for free at http://www
.google.com/calendar/. However, if
users already use other Google services, they already have Google
accounts and can use the same logins
and passwords to access Google
Calendar.
& Computer
technical requirements: For best viewing, set the
computer’s screen resolution to
8003600 pixels or higher. Google
Calendar is fully compatible with
most Apple and PC computer
browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6–7, Mozilla Firefox
version 2 and later, and Apple Safari
3.1. Users must enable cookies and
JavaScript. Google Calendar can
sync with the 2003 and 2007 Microsoft Outlook Calendar versions, as
long as one has Windows Vista or
Windows XP, but not the Windows
XP 64-bit edition. Users can import
events from their Apple iCal (versions 2.0 and newer).
& Cell phone technical requirements: The user’s cell phone browser
J Med Libr Assoc 96(4) October 2008
must have cookies enabled and be
XHML compliant. Also, the user’s
cell phone network needs to allow
secure sockets layer (SSL) traffic and
cookies. Check Google Calendar’s
Help topic, Mobile Phone Requirements, for details on how to test
compatibility.
& Technical
support/help URL
,http://www.google.com/support/
calendar/.: Google has a What’s
New page as well as a Known Issues
page that lists glitches—it has a short
list. Currently, there is no official
Google blog on the Google Calendar;
however, users can go to Google
Groups ,http://www.google.com/
groups/. and search the phrase,
‘‘Google Calendar,’’ to find helpful discussion groups. For cell phone and
calendar issues, visit the Google Mobile
Help Group ,http://www.groups.google
.com/group/google-mobile-help..
Tanya Feddern-Bekcan, MLIS, AHIP,
tfeddern@med.miami.edu, Louis
Calder Memorial Library, University
of Miami Miller School of Medicine,
Miami, FL
DOI: 10.3163/1536-5050.96.4.023
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