By Michael Casey & Michael Stephens When was the last time someone said lawyers or doctors needed to update their images into the 21st century? How many skits on Prairie Home Companion or Saturday Night Live have you seen where doctors appear as outdated, dowdy spinsters in need of love or romance? None. Yet Garrison Keillor’s “Adventures of Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian” parades antiquated and stereotyped images of librarians as humor. Unfortunately, librarians are often portrayed as technologically backward, fearful of teens and loud noises, and overly protective of books to the point of not wanting anyone to “touch our […]
Yearly Archives: 2007
564 posts
Tess reading Harry Potter Originally uploaded by Hennepin County Library Via Meg 2.0: Love this promotion for Harry at my library: Submit a photo of you, a friend, a family member reading HP7 to add to our Flickr photostream Blog your review and discuss the book. There are now 90 comments!! from readers on HP. Any library could this kind of thing to allow users to share their reading experience.
Why good signage matters [aka you are fooling no one] Originally uploaded by jessamyn Jessamyn’s tour continues.
always remember who is most important Originally uploaded by jessamyn Jessamyn tours Seattle Public Library.
I’ve been working on a post about South Carolina’s State Library site for TechSource and just caught this at Dr. Curtis Rogers’ blog: I recently found out that staff members at the NM State Library do not have access to Flickr, YouTube, and other social softwares/web based technologies that Libraries are using in the 2.0 world to promote their services, offer IM/Chat reference services, and more. This is a big mistake! If the state library can’t access these tools then how are they supposed to do a good job of helping the libraries in the state? This makes no sense […]
Rob Coers writes: I am happy to announce to you that the Dutch public libraries now also offer a chat reference service to the audiences. Not via IM, but via an application by a small Dutch company, called Chatfone. Behind the scenes there is a team of about 30 librarians who also work as al@din searchers, the nation-wide QnA service, running on OCLC’s QuestionPoint. In the last months of 2006, 22 public libraries tested several ways of chat reference. We tried: 1. Meebo 2. the big IM’s – MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, monitored with Meebo 3. QuestionPoint Chat 4. Chatfone Chatfone […]
I am blown away by the new vision and mission statements from the University Library at McMaster in Hamilton, Ontario. Jeff Trzeciak, University Librarian,and his team of strategic planners have really honed in on some incredible goals. http://ulatmac.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/new-visionmission-statements/ Vision McMaster University Library will be recognized as Canada’s most innovative, user-centred, academic library. Mission The University Library advances teaching, learning and research at McMaster by: · teaching students to be successful, ethical information seekers · facilitating access to information resources · providing welcoming spaces for intellectual discovery · promoting the innovative adoption of emerging learning technologies We value: · excellent customer […]
poster idea for fall orientation – student of the year Originally uploaded by K Jane Poster idea for fall orientation at the University of Guelph — student of the year. Libraries – steal this idea! Mash up your own! Thanks KJane!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/sets/72157600975093412/ What stories could you tell about your library? A day in the ______ department? The journey of a book from arrival to being placed on the shelf? The possibilities are endless! This might make a good exercise as well for learning Flickr, planning a story and creating it. Hmmmm. 🙂
DegreeTutor has a series of interviews up with various library folk. Take a look: http://www.degreetutor.com/library/librarians-online Here’s mine: http://www.degreetutor.com/library/librarians-online/michael-stephens I do get talk about grocery stores: We can learn from the “retail expectations” of our users and potential users. I was amazed to see a high end grocery store chain in Minneapolis offer a meeting room for groups. The Book Club could be meeting at the store – not at the library in the near future! One goal for the L2 library might be to restablish the idea of the commons – that shared space that can be many things to […]