Michael Stephens is a frequent speaker at library conferences around the world, he was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2005. He has been the keynote speaker at many conferences, including the Iowa Library Association Conference, Ohio Tech Connections, the Rethinking Resource Sharing Conference, the Mississippi Library 2.0 Summit (Mississippi State University), and the Ohio Library Council. He also spoke at Internet Librarian International in London in 2004, 2005 and 2006, and at the August 2006 TICER Innovation Institute at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands. He serves on the editorial boards of several major journals, including Internet […]
Yearly Archives: 2006
717 posts
Michael Buckland, Redesigning Library Services, 1992: The people whom libraries are to serve are making increasing use of the new information technology of computers and electronic storage, in addition to the old information technology of pen, paper, and photocopier. The new tools provide powerful options for working with data, text, sound, and images. As examples, consider the reduction in labor now required for sending an (electronic) message or text to distant collaborators, for the compilation of concordances, for complex simulations and calculations, for image enhancement, and for the analysis of large sets of numeric data. There is, predictably, an increasing […]
Holding an MLS from Indiana University, Michael Stephens has spent the last fifteen years working in public libraries. Beginning in the fall of 2006, Michael will be joining the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, as an Instructor. He is a student in the University of North Texas IMLS Distance Independent Information Science Ph.D. Cohort Program, studying libraries, librarians, and social software. He is currently writing his dissertation. He has presented at library conferences locally, nationally, and internationally, has published with Neal-Schuman Inc.and has written for Public Libraries, Library Journal, the OCLC Newsletter […]
I’m working on my research proposal for my dissertation and after many permutations, I’m focusing on public library Weblogs and their social function. Currently, I’m trying to get a grip on the methodology section and I contacted Amanda Etches Johnson, Biblioblogger, speaker and academic librarian at McMaster, about using her wiki as one of the sources to gather PL Weblogs for content analysis. Amanda reported the numbers above to me and gave me permission to blog them. Thanks Amanada! I note last April she reported on the “state of the biblioblogosphere” –maybe it’s time to do that again, eh Amanda? […]
My writing partner for CIL explains her take on L2 at het blog: This is partially because I believe Library 2.0 is best tackled by people currently working in libraries, which I am not. But my experiences working in public libraries (and hearing about other people’s experiences) make me believe in Library 2.0 as a positive unifying force. I believe we need something to hitch our wagon to, and I’m happy hooking mine up here. The main arguments I have seen against Library 2.0 are that “2.0” is too much of a buzzword or that Library 2.0 contains some existing […]
http://www.libraryforlife.org/blogs/lifeline/?p=1470 Joe, my esteemed colleague at SJCPL, is in NOLA, and today he posted to the SJCPL Blog. Go Joe! I like this form many reasons, including the fact it’s transparent, it promotes the library’s staff development initiatives and it makes for interetsing reading. I’d urge other librarians blogging from ALA to post to their library’s blog as well.
Margaret Lincoln posts at the Nigh Blog: The June 2006 issue of An End to Intolerance (AETI) features an article titled The Great Blog: Sharing Elie Wiesel’s Memoir, Night.†Cold Spring Harbor student JP Rourkis contributed this excellent write-up of the project that linked high school students from New York and Michigan in a meaningful learning experience focusing on the Holocaust. AETI is an international, student-produced magazine that is part of the Holocaust Genocide Project (HGP). Not only was HGP honored as a Program of Excellence by the New York State English Council in 2005, but the organization has been […]
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 […]
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 […]