That’s a quote from A New Culture of Learning – it illustrates well my thoughts about future libraries. I want to say THANK YOU to the good folks here in Wyoming who brought me in to speak at their annual meeting – I’m having a blast. Keynote Presentation: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/239835/StephensKeynoteWyoming.pdf Trends & Tech Presentation: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/239835/WyomingTrendsStephens.pdf
Monthly Archives: September 2012
15 posts
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/opinion/michael-stephens/did-you-miss-the-r-squared-conference-it-was-a-barn-burner-office-hours/ My new column is up online at LJ for this month – I wanted double word count so we went with the virtual for this one. The column is all about my experiences at R-Squared: Over two days we explored creativity and curiosity, heard from keynoters such as Josh Linkner, author of Disciplined Dreaming, and each of us chose and completed our own immersive group experience. I chose Customer Curiosity, though other options included Creative Spaces, Culture, and Abundant Community. With John Bellina and Tasso Stathopulos from the Denver marketing firm Ricochet Ideas. Ricochet is the design group that helped […]
Note from Michael: Mace’s post echoes my own thoughts about the R-Squared conference. The opportunities for learning, collaboration and engagement seemed so fresh and exciting at the conference as they did while cycling. Cycling for libraries – one of infinite different ways to cooperate with colleagues A hypothesis: there are better, and more efficient ways to spend time with colleagues than to sit in an auditorium and watch powerpoints all day long. Sounds like common sense. But when you take a look at our profession, librarianship, you will quickly notice how much time, effort, money and kerosene we spend to send our best minds to […]
Have you ever found yourself inside the library echo chamber? I think we all have. You’ve got something great to share or say about libraries and you put it out there…and it’s only talked about by librarians and libraries. Some great presentations and pieces have been written about the echo chamber (some of my faves are from Ned Potter, Sally Pewhairangi, and Steven V. Kaszynski). These have got me thinking…how can we avoid the echo chamber? My thought is this…expand the conversation and try, try, try your best to include those outside of the library world. But how can we […]
2012_09_11_165103, a photo by R-Squared Conference on Flickr. Check out all the pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsquaredconference/sets/72157627620430680/
My new column is up: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/09/opinion/michael-stephens/little-free-libraries-office-hours Scanning the recent news articles about the LFL movement reveals something else, too. More often than not, those interviewed acknowledge the sense of community and collegiality that grow up around the little libraries. From a Los Angeles Times piece on a local LFL: “It has turned strangers into friends and a sometimes impersonal neighborhood into a community. It has become a mini–town square….” This gets to the heart of what many of us in libraries know: knowledge shared within a framework of caring and familiarity can strengthen communities. Evidence of caring is present in the knowledge […]
Still on a “Rocky Mountain high” from the R-Squared Conference experience. Sorting my thoughts… but for now some videos from the Anythink Library folks:
Right now is our busiest time of the year. Last week was especially crazy. I hosted an author event featuring our One Book author Tony Horwitz (http://www.morianevalley.edu/confederates), I chaired a department meeting, co-chaired a cataloing meeting in prep for RDA, attended a House of Delegates meeting for our union, met with our director of assessment about our annual assessment plan, and taught a couple of classes. But, out of all of this, the coolest thing I did all week happened at the reference desk. I was doing my normal reference shift, and a student came up to the desk. He […]
The Pierce County Library System has a mobile catalog for your mobile device. Now you can take us wherever you go!
http://rsquaredconference.org/news/mornings-live-polls (Click through for more and for the open ended answers to this question: What one thing can we do to accelerate learning and transformation in our libraries?) Will we be most needed to help people consumer consume or create content? Answers Responses Percent Consume 90 35.20% Create 166 64.80% Total 256 Will our greatest value be our physical presence or our virtual presence? Answers Responses Percent Physical 89 56.70% Virtual 68 43.30% Total 157