Monthly Archives: April 2005

70 posts

Jybe 2.0 is Here (RIP VR)

I’ve had an ongoing dialog with Brian at Jybe and today (Sunday) he asked me to take a look at Jybe 2.0 with him. Amidst my parsing of XML and pondering a paper on iPodder, Brian and I spent about 30 minutes looking at the new plug in and discussing how librarians might use Jybe to co-browse with users or each other (I see a big future for training and staff development this way- I could conduct a brief tutorial on a databse from my desk with a librarian at a branch! Our most cool staff dev librarian at SJCPL […]

More on “Meet the Gamers”

I just did a second read through and this article may turn out to be a touchstone for futurists and library planners as well as signifying service directions a public library needs to look at very seriously to remain viable with a goodly part of the population. Consider this: “It is impossible to resist imagining a library built on gamer principles, where patrons decide which materials and services are offered and which are not. All discussions of the library’s future direction would be open, with full transcripts digitized, searchable, and part of the permanent record. Mechanisms would be put in […]

Quotable Quotes: IM

For a generation raised with the Internet, instantaneous access to both information and the social networks for which that information is relevant is the norm. Earlier generations see instant messenging (or even cell phones) as a distraction, wondering how anyone can get work done with them. For the current generation, the opposite seems to be true: it’s hard to imagine getting any work done without those tools. Meet the Gamers By Kurt Squire & Constance Steinkuehler — Library Journal 4/15/2005

“Defusing the Angry Patron” Presentation

Wow! The Library supporter posts some learning objectives, a reference to a cool Neal Schuman title, AND a PPT of a presentation up called “Defusing the Angry Patron” on the blog today. I have been reading this blog all week and had it in my “to be blogged” folder. There’s some good stuff here. Talk about “ready to go content!” Thanks Library Supporter!

Comment About the Reference Interview & IM

Christina writes about the IM Training Module: Good stuff– however, I don’t see where you reinforce good reference interview behaviors. I’ve seen staff who are very good at conducting f2f reference completely forget everything when they start VR, and I would expect the same from IM. Even in the transcripts I’ve seen from libraries doing IM reference I haven’t seen probing and follow up questions as much as I would like. You can still be informal and “cool” and make sure you have the right question. How do you know that you’re above the 55%? Very true! The Reference Interview […]