My Minnesota traveling companion, Mary beth Sancomb Moran, on Abram, heads on spikes and public use PCs: It still amazes me that there are librarians who are choosing to ignore the patron’s needs for their own convenience. Having been a library director, I get the issues that can arise and the fixes that are all too tempting to put into place. I sat at one of the public access computers one morning, removing the various and sundry programs that had been installed against library policy again, grumbling that if I ever found the culprit, I was going to put his […]
Monthly Archives: June 2006
63 posts
http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2006/06/social-networking-five-sites-you-need.html Fred Stutzman, Phd student at UNC Chapel Hill, posts on social sites, including this bit of wisdom: Social networking for the sake of social networking just doesn’t cut it. Put simply, we want more from SNS-enabled sites than association. If we’re going to invest our time into a SNS site, make it worth our while. Make it a game, make it entertaining, make it useful – but don’t expect us to come if you think its enough to browse our friends profiles. I like Facebook etc BUT I am enamored of Flickr and LastFM. These sites let me do […]
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/2006/06/rereadings_gett.html I’m rereading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, since it’s again relevant in how I’m trying to organize my infinite pile of things to do. I’m still using the Getting Calendar Done approach of using Google Calendar to capture tasks in a trusted, searchable place that’s not my inbox. I’m about half way through the first chapter, and already my backpack is quite a bit lighter and better organized, some health insurance incompetence is being dealt with, and a very interesting job offer landed in my inbox. (Your mileage may vary.) I find that when reading something like GTD it […]
Caught this in Mark Lindner’s post about his blog’s page views. Nice little bit at the end about joining the biblioblogosphere and “why we do this…” And, yes, I fully know that this little event really is no great shakes in the grand scheme of things, or even as important as stopping to appreciate the beauty of a flower or the smile of a puppy, but it gives me a small little glow anyway. If anyone had told me back in January 2005 that I’d have well over 500 posts and 20,000 page views in less than a year and […]
Tuesday I was in downtown Chicago to take part in the American Society for Engineering Education conference. I was pleased to see they have a conference blog: http://www.asee.org/chicago2006/ I was there to present in the Engineering Libraries division. Convened by Darcy Duke, from MIT, I was part of Staying Relevant to Our Users: How New Technologies are Redefining the Role of the (Engineering) Librarian. The session description: New technologies and new tools are changing the face of what information professionals do and perhaps even redefining what it means to be a librarian. This issue is particularly relevant to engineering and […]
OCLC Newsletter Originally uploaded by mstephens7. http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/1.htm I was really happy to be asked to contribute to the new OCLC NextSpace on Web 2.0. Take a look. The folks who contributed blow me away with their ideas and insights. Don’t miss Dr. Wendy Schultz’s take on Library 4.0: But Library 4.0 will add a new mode, knowledge spa: meditation, relaxation, immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought. In companies, this may take the form of retreat space for thought leaders, considered an investment in innovation; in public libraries, the luxurious details will require private partners as sponsors providing the […]
Via the Copyblogger: http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-sell-rss/ Recently released studies re-affirm that people love getting content by email, and don’t get why they should switch to RSS. Of course when you ask the question “Do you want to aggregate RSS feeds?” and get a negative response, it’s as if you had asked “Do you want to access Web pages with HTTP?” in 1995 (good one, Scott!). Regardless, people simply don’t like change. And when you tout RSS on the basis that it does the exact same thing as email when it comes to content delivery, you’ll get nothing more than a shrug and […]
Hectic Pace Originally uploaded by mstephens7. http://blogs.ala.org/pace.php Welcome Andrew! Teresa Koltzenburg posts at ALA TechSource about the start of Annual and Andrew’s blog beginnings!
http://www.libraryloft.org/ Cleck the link above or check it out at the Library Loft myspace page! This is an excellent example of involving teens, using new technologies and building community. What is YOUR library doing with teens and technology?
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2006/06/20/jenny_and_alas_excellent_adventure.html Congratulations to Jenny Levine on her new job at the American Library Association!! What an incredible thing: Jenny quotes the job description: “Knowledge of 2.0 technologies and concepts. Ability to work in a complex organizational environment. Strong communication ability (written and verbal). Comfort with rapid prototyping….” Who would have thought just 8 or so months ago when the discussions of social tools and L2 were ramping up that by Summer 2006 ALA would be advertising for someone to utilize 2.0 technologies and work in an environment of rapid prototyping? And who would have guessed that one of the most […]