http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/2835576,CST-NWS-redbox26.article ”It would be bestsellers, DVDs and popular items, just like our popular library. You’d put your library card in, select an item, it comes out and you’d return it back to the same place or to any one of our libraries,” Dempsey said. ”Some of these vending machines store up to a hundred items. Some of them store more than that. . . . This is just another way to get materials into the hands of the public. It’s a new product, and we’re talking with our colleagues in other cities to see how it’s working for them. We’re […]
Yearly Archives: 2010
226 posts
Via Benjamin Wheal comes this spooky idea you could adopt for your library or library group. This year the South Australian Library & Information Network (SALIN) Committee has chosen to celebrate our diverse and changing profession through production of the 2011 calendar “Zombies in the Library”. In 12 beautifully rendered scenes the calendar covers such topics as the role of the Zombie in reference, the frustrations faced when the Undead hog the photocopier, and for cataloguers, poses the eternal question: 299.675 or 398.21? All calendars come in A3 size, are professionally bound and beautifully printed (and you can even choose your starting […]
Don’t miss: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/10252010/illinois-libraries-talk-sustainability Sixty librarians from around Illinois met at Chicago’s Field Museum October 22 to discuss how they could better help their communities go green. The workshop kicked off the Illinois Library Association’s year-long Go Green @ your Illinois Library program, which aims to develop a group of librarians committed to environmental awareness. “It’s about libraries holding the conversation in their communities about sustainability,” said Denise Raleigh, director of marketing, development, and communications at Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin. “Libraries already connect people to resources; this is about connecting people to each other.” Find out more here: http://gogreenila.info/
(Higher quality) Use Libraries and Learn Stuff, originally uploaded by GeoShore. For more please see : http://use-libraries-and-learn-stuff.blogspot.com/2010/10/use-libraries-and-learn-stuff.html
Kurt Fischer noted (in passing, at a Mind, Brain, Education Institute) that the Conduit Metaphor of Learning is defunct. This is the idea that education is essentially a kind of pipe whereby knowledge travels from the mouth or mind of a more- to a less-learned person. That the learner is a receptacle to be filled with knowledge. Learning, it ends up, is actually much more complex. And knowledge is apparently not a paper package of data tied with string moving across the meat counter. Which is just as well, because the Conduit Metaphor taken to the extreme leads to students thinking […]
Preparing for class lecture in LIS768 Participatory Service & Emerging Technologies as well as the workshop at Internet Librarian International, I overhauled and updated most of my GIANT presentation centered around my model of “The Hyperlinked Library.” As usual, the slides contain citations, Flickr links and is full CC licensed. I already have updates and changes but I thought I would release this version. The original was first presented in Australia in 2008. Download the 303MB file here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/239835/HyperlinkedLibFall2010Update.pdf The Hyperlinked Library by Michael Stephens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at […]
I am very happy to announce I’m writing for LJ again! I thoroughly enjoyed writing The Transparent Library with Michael Casey for over two years – hopefully Michael and I can continue writing again soon! Those columns are some of my favorites. Now, I’m happy to be exploring avenues related to educating future librarians. http://bit.ly/coCkbX WELCOME TO “OFFICE HOURS,” a new space in Library Journal where we’ll explore what’s happening in library and information science education. In the coming months we’ll talk about the ongoing discourse about LIS schools; research that informs us, our users, and our facilities; and stories from the trenches on […]
Take a look at http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/careers/salaries/887197-305/placements__salaries_2010_the.html.csp Dominican GSLIS alum writes a thoughtful piece on job searching after graduation entitled “The Lucky Few.” Breaking into the library world has never been a walk in the park. “Doing time” as a clerk, shelving, or simply working part-time is par for the course in this profession. But as a great man once sang, “The times, they are a-changin’.” There is a drastic increase in the number of degreed librarians taking paraprofessional positions, simply because they need a full-time job with benefits. Also, there are more temporary positions being filled with librarians wishing and hoping […]
Good morning! I’m up at 5:30am EST to present via Skype at Internet Librarian International 2010. Missing this trip because of my knee injury has been rough but I’m happily following along on Twitter, etc. My slides are here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/239835/StephensILI2010Transparency.pdf
From Michael – This is a reprint of a column originally published last year in Digitale Biblioteek. “On average, students in online learning conditions per- formed better than those receiving face-to-face instructi- on”. That was the conclusion of an authoritative report by SRI International commissioned by the US Ministry of Education. The New York Times wrote about it on August 24th: “The report examined the comparative research for on- line versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military”2. Michael Stephens […]