Last night, from 6pm to 7pm, I gave a talk with a group of 60 librarians at the State Library of Victoria, Australia. It was 9am today for them… so as I was nearing the end of my day, sitting in front of my Mac with my boys on the floor beside me, those folks were at work, probably enjoying coffee or tea and planning for the day’s activities. ( There was actually a test of the fire alarm system about halfway through!) We used a combination of Skyp and Jybe to do the “Virtual Visit,” which was planned by […]
Yearly Archives: 2005
568 posts
(What can you learn about folks by their Tag Cloud?”) Anne down in Australia turned me on to this term while we were preparing for my talk with Skype and Jybe. ! I love it. Have you gotten lost in tags yet? Now there clusters too!! Tag Cloud: A tag cloud is a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag. Try these: […]
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/161/report_display.asp I meant to blog this a few weeks ago, but here it is…still timely in my book. “The average American internet user is not sure what podcasting is, what an RSS feed does, or what the term “phishing” means…” Pew lists eight techie terms in the report and I kid you not, your public/student/employee technology/internet classes should define and discuss everyone of them! These did ok: Spam Firewall Spyware Internet Cookies Adware These didn’t: Phishing Podcasting RSS Feeds (I’d add blogging and image sites too!) This is important knowledge… every librarian on your staff should be able to define […]
I’m weak! Weak I tell you! In the last few days I’ve lusted for some HOT new tech items: an iPod nano, the iTunes phone, a new Powerbook (hopefully announced in a couple of weeks)… what to do?? What I would tell a library or a workshop filled with tech-planning librarians is to give it some time, read some reviews and talk to some early adopters. Find out what their experience has been, etc. What are folks saying about the nano or the phone? Look at the big picture of what needs and services such tech might improve or replace… […]
Ken finds a podcast at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley Web site. http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php?id=P3282 ” On a hunch I searched for the RSS feed of the web site of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and I found a very professional, welcoming, and informative single podcast (linked here) from the admissions office about how they consider applications to the MBA program. You can see the impulse — the admissions office must have had to answer questions about how they screen applicants hundreds of time each season, so this podcast might save them time repeating this information. […]
LISDOM ponders it…This makes for an intriguing discussion: in some instances, like tomorrow when I give a presentation to librarians in Australia, the world seems amazingly flat. In others, there is a great disparity. http://lisdom.blogspot.com/2005/08/world-is-not-flat.html Friedman, toward the end of the book, concedes that the world is not truly “flat” but advances and shifts in the global economy are certainly making it seem that way.
We have a slew of bloggers here at SJCPL that write for the Lifeline, but my colleague Joe Sipocz continually rocks my world with posts like this: http://lishost.org/~sjcpl/archives/000389.html It’s timely, interesting and relates back to the collection.
So Harry Potter is available exclusively at iTunes. That means you need an iPod to play the files! What a DRM mess we live in… Anyway, to try to put a spin on this, one cool thing a library could do Is buy a Harry Potter iPod or 2 and circulate them with all the books loaded! Just like the shuffles circulating at South Huntington PL, this might make some Potter fans very happy: access to a Hogwarts engraved iPod and hours of magical audio! http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=9588012&src=rss/technologyNews
Sometimes it’s good to return to an article/blog post/presentation and see how it stacks up after some time has passed. For example, I just found a print of this from a 2001 LJ: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA71785.html Roy Tennant writes in April 2001 about building agile organizations and suggests three key factors to have a grip on: Communication, management and staffing. Through my late 2005 lens, this resonates: Good communication within the organization – both from above and below – is essential. Communication should not be stifled by overcontrolling management or by resentful staff. An agile organization offers many avenues of communication. Line […]
In the new issue of Business 2.0, there’s a brief article on what Google may have up its sleeve. http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1093558,00.html What if Google (GOOG) wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user?s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world?s information could become one of the globe?s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it? First it would build a national broadband network — let’s call it the […]