Monthly Archives: December 2009

15 posts

An Australian Thank You

This year has been most magical. I traveled a bit, had some wonderful students in my classes, and learned so much from everyone I encountered. I also spent much of the summer with our new dog Cooper in Traverse City hiking and sitting by the fire. One of the most magical and life changing events, however,  was spending five weeks in Australia as the 2009 CAVAL Visiting Scholar, researching and speaking in the great land Down Under. Reflecting, as I do in the final days of each year, I can’t begin to describe how the time spent on the other […]

Must Check Out a Library Book

Must Check Out a Library Book, originally uploaded by mstephens7. From an anonymous submission comes this newspaper clipping – public library X is requiring proof of a book checkout “within the past two weeks” for young people to participate in “Game Day.” I just don’t know where to even begin with this.

BookMatch

I recently produced a screencast on a popular reader’s advisory tool we use at mpow. I want to bring the tool to the attention of those that do not normally follow book reviews such as Library Journal’s Booksmack because of the use of participatory technologies. I have seen it written that IT/Technology is reference, I think we need to extend this to RA. BookMatch: An RA Innovation via Screencast “In an illuminating screencast created especially for BookSmack!, popular services manager Ricki Nordmeyer and adult services librarian Mick Jacobsen explain the Skokie Public Library’s new BookMatch program. This patron pleaser takes […]

Thanks Oak Park Public Library!

A big shout out to everyone at OPPL for making their staff inservice day such fun – and invigorating. I was also honored to present the staff day with my colleagues Drs. Karen Brown & Kate Marek. Their take on transforming library service was a perfect fit with my Hyperlinked Library model. The interactive exercises they did got all us of thinking! The slides are here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/239835/TransformingOPPL.pdf

Twitter @ Your Library

I want to point everybody to Toby Greenwalt’s (theanalogdivide on Twitter) great slideshow and even more awesome handout on starting and using Twitter.  As I was looking over Toby’s handout I kept thinking, “I wish I had this when I started out.” Full disclosure:  I work with Toby at the Skokie Public Library. TTW Contributor: Mick Jacobsen

View it any way you’d like…

Via all sorts of wonderful bloggers comes this video prototyping the future of Sports Illustrated. Karl Fisch had this to say: More evidence that the way we interact with “text” is changing. To combine and paraphrase something I’ve heard David Warlick say more than once with something Jason Ohler says: We need to stop paper training our students. We should spend less time training our students how to use paper, and more time helping them use digital tools to interact in meaningful and productive ways with the media forms of the day. Also reminds me of this post: Note that […]

In Support and Extension of “An Unformed Thought” by Mick Jacobsen

In Mick Jacobsen’s post, “An Unformed Thought,” in which he discussed the possibility of libraries acting as a hub for information technology needs such as website design and hosting, he hit on a core value of librarianship – community building.  As we strive to build library spaces that are usable and promote interaction and collaboration, we naturally try to enhance interpersonal connections and create conversations that connect our patrons either to us or other users.  And the conversation in the past couple of years has advanced this thought into our online spaces but with a reliance on preexisting technologies like […]