Library communicates with blogs Web logs easy to update, viewed via Internet By ANNIE BASINSKI Tribune Staff Writer This morning in the South Bend Tribune, SJCPL received some nice press in the form of an article about our blog, which last week underwent a change from two seperate blogs to one BIG one! “Blogs ranging from personal to political are turning up everywhere on the Internet — from Howard Dean’s presidential campaign blog to Newsweek’s “MarthaWatch.” Michael Stephens, head of networked resources development and training at the St. Joseph County Public Library, started “blogging” last year after he learned about […]
Contributors Michael Stephens
CNN reports this am the Google announced yesterday a new Web mail service. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/31/google.email.ap/index.html I have taught Yahoo Mail for years at my library and on other training/consulting jobs. I’m interested to see how Google stacks up. I can already tell, I may switch. Why? The Google name – be all end all for searching for most folks (I know…I know…) carries a lot of good connotations for me. “But analysts said that Google — whose technology is behind nearly four out of every five Web searches — could shake up the free e-mail market.” The public uses Google big […]
I haven’t got to post about this yet but on March 17th I was a guest speaker at Professor Bill Cowley’s class on Organizational Communication in Libraries at Dominican University GSLIS in River Forest, Ill. (In my opinion, Dominican ROCKS! The staff I met, students, everyone was were friendly and energetic. The campus is beautiful. And I know some GSLIS grads who are pretty excellent librarians!) My topic was using to technology to communicate in libraries. I covered e-mail, delivering a library’s message vis Web sites, the internal Web presence (Intranets), Instant Messaging, chat-based services, blogging, RSS and future innovations. […]
Most cool to see Aaron’s take on the IM thing in libraries. A little gem of info in his post? The fact that his director has been on IM… nice. I have had two branch heads IM me today as part of their homework! Tomorrow: the Main Library Dept. Heads…
Joe and I IM after class. Dale, our Web Developer, made his custom icon! This is cool. I just spent an hour with our branch heads teaching them how to use AIM on their Mac PowerBooks to communicate with each other from wherever they find themselves. With all the talk about IM: at CIL, in blogs and in SLIS classes (a recent email from a student/SJCPL colleague reported that an IU SLIS professor stated that IM will be the way to communicate by 2007!) — it is good for the branch librarians to be aware of what IM is, how […]
CIL Highlights included all I’ve written in this category before and the following: Meeting Rachel Singer Gordon before Friday?s keynote. Her book came out the same time as mine and we were reviewed together a few times. Her writing has inspired me ever since, especially her well-thought views on where our profession is heading. Our Bloggers Dine Around (WE missed you Steven!) where 12 people fell in for great Thai food, some yummy cocktails and some darn fine chat: blogs in the library workplace, PDAs, the wireless world, evil PowerPoint presentations and of course a recap of the Dead and […]
One of the highlighhts of this Conference was seeing Jenny Levine at the Wednesday night Dead and Emerging Technologies session. She made some great points. This stuff is spot on. She gratefully shared her notes with me, so here’s a bit that really hit home for me: (Jenny’s words are in bold!) THINGS THAT SCARE ME – Library web sites with email reference forms that say ?We will respond to your email within 48 hours? Uh Oh – SJCPL is guilty! – Libraries that don?t provide wireless access for patrons, librarians that don?t understand why they will need to OH […]
And so is Hansel. But really, take a look at http://libraryrfid.blogspot.com/. I lost track of my source for this one… probably LISBlogsource. Please forgive me!
I have not mentioned the biggest thing happening in my life yet because I wanted to give a little time to thinking about new directions and life changes. My big news though, which came to me the day I got back from CIL: I have applied to and been accepted into the first distance independent PhD program for Information Science out of the University of North Texas. The program will begin in June with a few days on campus and then will be Web-based with cohort meetings a couple of times a semester for 2 years. I thought long and […]
Yesterday was our annual Open Book Festival at SJCPL. There were activities, authors and fun! The coolest thing was the appearance of spooky author Jonathan Rand, who resides Up North. He even wrote a book set in Traverse City! This is an excellent example of what libraries can do to promote reading of course but also to promote the library as meeting place and social center. Well done Open Book Committee!! Here’s Dana and Lori with the Man himself!