RAILS is offering networking groups the opportunity to have their own Zoom meeting license. RAILS has a limited number of licenses that can be used for networking groups that meet on a regular basis.
Requirements
Please review the following requirements to determine the eligibility of your group for a RAILS networking group Zoom meeting license. All conditions must be met to receive a Zoom license:
- Your networking group must be an established group with an updated networking group directory listing
- Meets at least twice per year
- At least 75% of the group's members are RAILS member libraries or employees of RAILS member libraries
Responsibilities and Best Practices
As a networking group, you will be responsible for the support and troubleshooting of your license. RAILS Information Technology will only be able to provide limited support for your meetings. Because RAILS IT cannot attend every meeting, we ask that you please take time to familiarize yourself with the Zoom platform.
By assigning your networking group a specific license, the expectation is that your group will the following actions:
- Setting up your own events
- Running registration
- Ensuring event security
- Promoting your event
- Downloading and storing the recording
To help get started, we’ve created this best practices document. For technical issues, you should consult the Zoom Help Center.
Creating Your Event
Once your group has been given its license, you can start planning your meetings. To schedule a meeting in Zoom:
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal and navigate to Meetings
- Click the Schedule a New Meeting button
- Give your meeting a topic, description, and date/time
For groups of 25 or more people, you may want to consider making Registration required. This will allow you to get a better idea of who is attending. Once the meeting is over, you can download your registration list and email those individuals with more information about the group.
Security
To combat the rise of unwanted people joining meetings, all RAILS meetings are required to have a password. By default every meeting will be assigned a randomly generated password. You can edit the password by following the directions below:
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal and navigate to Meetings
- Click the topic of the meeting you would like to update the password for
- Click Edit this Meeting
- Under Meeting Options, edit the password
Recording
You do have the option to record your meeting, but networking groups must have the On the local computer option chosen. This means that your group will be responsible for downloading and storing the recorded version. RAILS does not offer storage space for individual recordings.
You may choose to store your recordings on free/paid file sharing platforms such as Google Drive or Dropbox. You might also consider creating a YouTube account for your networking group.
Promoting Your Event
Once you’ve created your event in Zoom, you can start promoting. Please note that different types of meetings will have two different ways of distributing invitations:
- For meetings with registration, all you need is the registration link
- For meetings without registration, you will need the meeting room link and a password Here are a few channels that we suggest to get out the word about registration/meeting access:
- Ask to have your group added as an event sponsor on the Library Directory & Learning Calendar (L2) site and add your meeting to the L2 calendar
- Utilize the RAILS email lists
- Create a news article about your meeting
- Add a link to your meeting to your networking group directory listing
- Add your meeting to social media channels and tag us @railslibraries
Help
Sometimes things go wrong. If you need help with configuring your license or setting up a meeting, please contact RAILS Information Technology, help@railslibraries.info.