Monthly Archives: September 2013

9 posts

If you like it, put a badge on it.

From #hyperlibMOOC student  Megan Egbert. What do badges at Meridian Library District mean for professional development? Megan writes: We are piloting a program that would use digital badges to increase staff member’s professional development and ongoing education participation. The badges act not only as incentive, but also as a visual reminder of completion. We are using Credly to design and award badges which allows for anyone to award anyone else a badge. So in addition to competences that can be demonstrated to earn a badge, peers can also award them for performance. The program is designed using a Google site discussion […]

Be the Spark: Looking Back at R-Squared One Year Later

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D19gyGmJCpI& On Sept. 9-11, 2012, 350 library professionals from 38 states and three countries embarked on a journey to Telluride, Colo., to rethink libraries and learn about taking risks to move libraries forward. This is what they discovered. http://www.rsquaredconference.org R2 continues to be the most engaging, rewarding and challenging conference I have ever attended! I wrote about my experience at R2 here: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/opinion/michael-stephens/did-you-miss-the-r-squared-conference-it-was-a-barn-burner-office-hours/

Update on #hyperlibMOOC – Week One Wrap Up

Note from Michael: Just wanted to let TTW readers see what our week one wrap post included over at The Hyperlinked Library MOOC. Follow along here:  https://twitter.com/search?q=%23hyperlibMOOC&src=hash A Goodreads community has sprung up, created by the students: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/113641-hyperlibmooc Here’s the wrap up, complete with a pic of Cooper! (Note the @names below are for the MOOC platform Kyle built)   Greetings all! This week has been incredible! I am so knocked out by all the folks joining us, the profiles going up, blogs taking shape – and the site wide interaction filling our virtual learning space. During the summer, this adventure felt […]

How Traverse City Really “Uses” Its Library

  Nice news story about my home library: http://www.theticker.tc/story/how-traverse-city-really-uses-its-library by Lynn Geiger “I love looking at data of all kinds, but not everyone does,” says TADL Director Metta Landsdale of the system that offers data and insight into material circulation, library use and collection size. “The dashboard presents what I believe is excellent TADL performance in a way that more and more people can absorb and appreciate.” In addition to those nearly 290,000 adult books, 222,658 children’s books have been checked out in 2013, along with 205,484 movies, 109,578 albums, 17,217 magazines, 31,492 audiobooks and even 2,456 puppets. TC’s most […]

Office Hours: Listening to student voices

However engaging, thought-provoking, and even polarizing the speakers were at the Future of Academic Libraries Symposium presented by McMaster University and Library Journal, they couldn’t match what five McMaster University students had to say. “Hearing from Our Users: What Students Expect,” moderated by Mike Ridley, CIO and chief librarian at the University of Guelph, offered the most striking, honest, and emotionally charged views of the entire day. It gave symposium participants a glimpse at students’ perceptions and opinions. Ridley urged the panel to “tell us what we need to hear,” and they did. While all five own a smartphone, not one said they had ever accessed library […]

Office Hours: Goals of an LIS Educator

Presenting at the Educause Learning Initiatives (ELI) conference last January in Austin, TX, was a seminal moment for me. I found my tribe of like-minded educators and technologists examining what it means to be teaching and creating learning environments in the 21st century. What I didn’t find was too many librarians; roughly seven to eight percent of the 500-plus attendees were librarians. (Note to readers: put this dynamic conference on your radar. We should be there to represent and participate in the conversations.) Beyond the benefits of finding like-minded thinkers, ELI forced me to articulate my personal goals as an […]

Office Hours: Heretical thoughts

By Michael Stephens I recently had a phone chat with a valued colleague who runs a university library. He had been working hard to streamline staffing and budgets owing to a financial shortfall, while holding steady to a strategic plan anchored in creating useful information and collaboration spaces for the student body. I asked the question I always ask when I’m talking to someone who hires new librarians: “What other skills and competencies should a new librarian have?” His response? “I want risk-takers…innovators…creatives….I don’t want someone who’s afraid to make a move or make a decision without getting permission.” We […]

#hyperlibMOOC: Community Profile of Margaret Jean Campbell

Margaret is my super cool research assistant. http://ischool.sjsu.edu/people/community-profile/margaret-jean-campbell Student Margaret Jean Campbell bubbles with enthusiasm when talking about how she helped develop the first massive open online course, or MOOC, at the San José State University School of Library and Information Science. The Hyperlinked Library MOOC (#hyperlibMOOC on Twitter), which started on September 3, 2013, is taught by assistant professor Michael Stephens and lecturer Kyle Jones. It parallels much of the content in Stephens’ LIBR 287: Hyperlinked Library course, offered to students enrolled in the school’s Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program. Intended for professional development, the MOOC is offered free to the public. […]

Things We Do in Private by TTW Contributor Troy Swanson

Everyone gets naked every once in awhile. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There’s nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them. But what if I decreed that from now on, every time you went to evacuate some solid waste, you’d have to do it in a glass room perched in the middle of Times Square, and you’d be buck naked? Even if you’ve got nothing wrong or weird with your body ­­and how many of us can say that? ­­ You’d have to be pretty strange to like that idea. Most of us would run screaming. Most […]