I am the guest columnist for RUSQ’s Accidental Technologist this summer. The very cool thing is the full text of the piece is up and online at the RUSQ blog. Please take a look and let me know what you think. I wrote this last January while the snow and wind were raging outside my window – I’m glad it doesn’t seem super dated by now. http://www.rusq.org/2008/08/18/taming-technolust/ Here are some of my favorite parts: A fact: new technologies will not save your library. New tech cannot be the center of your mission as an institution. I’m still taken aback when […]
Daily Archives: August 19, 2008
5 posts
http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/exciting-news-dutch-guys-are-releasing.html Kathy Dempsey writes: And you will not want to miss it. It’s called ShanachieTour: A Library Road Trip Across America. It features insightful writing by Erik Boekesteijn, amazing photographs by Geert van den Boogaard, and wonderful video by Jaap van de Geer. The book is all-color throughout and the DVD movie is a full hour long. The combo takes you on a coast-to-coast trip of U.S. libraries and landmarks. As the publisher’s site explains it: “With its infectiously upbeat outsider’s view of American libraries and the many challenges they face, this book and video set is sure to galvanize librarians of all […]
I had a wonderful time speaking at Columbus Metropolitan Library, helping to launch Learn & Play @ CML. One very cool thing is that they have outside participants following along as well as staff from all over the system. I was most impressed with the team who put the project together. I customized a version of The Hyperlinked Library for them. The slides are here. Rock on, CML!
LJ asked the Movers and Shakers to weigh in on “future proofing” libraries. One of my favorite responses comes from Char Booth: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6585850.html Social Capital The best way to future-proof libraries is not by electronically reimagining our most valuable attributes in a collective attempt to cheat obsolescence. Our insurance is going to come from a much more basic place—we have to turn inward, understand why libraries have been such fabulously lasting cultural institutions, and reflect on how best to transfer this to the modern information climate. Libraries represent thoughtfulness, peace, and possibility, and we should strive to keep them as […]
Warren Cheetham comments on an article at Read/Write Web: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/future_of_the_desktop.php Users are going to shift from acting as librarians to acting asdaytraders. As we move into an era where content creation and distribution become almost infinitely cheap, the scarcest resources will no longer be storage or bandwidth, it will be attention…. …In order to cope with the overwhelming complexity of our digital lives, we are going to increasingly rely on tools that help us manage our attention more productively — rather than tools that simply help us manage our information. It is a shift from the mindset of being librarians […]