Yesterday I presented the SJSU SLIS Lecture at the California Library Association. Thanks to all who attended and participated. For slides please Contact Michael
Contributors Michael Stephens
4147 posts
Note from Michael – Pamela is a WISE student from Rutgers taking my Hyperlinked Library course. This is a companion post to Holly’s previously published post on serving the hearing impaired. (**names have been changed for anonymity’s sake**) My education began with an eye-roll. The library worker standing next to me behind the circulation desk added a heavy sigh and a series of tut-tuts to the eye-roll. The troubling cause of this facial display? The child having a mild fit 15 feet away from us in the children’s section of the library. ”Do you know Stephen?” she asked me, as if […]
Monica Harris, a librarian from Oak Park, Illinois, recently posted a great article to the MakerSpaces and the Participatory Library group on Facebook about 3D printing and intellectual property in which Chris Anderson declared, “we’re going to get sued.” I wryly replied with a link to a Wired article that the lawsuits had already begun. Michael Weinberg, an attorney with Public Knowledge who was interviewed for the article, characterized 3D printers as a “disruptive technology” that is raising many intellectual property issues, and Monica pointed out that 3D printers have exposed the differences between copyright and patent law. Physical objects such as figurines, models, or Lego […]
I have been a part of this initiative as an instructor for the first two iterations and can not recommend it highly enough! Check it out if you live in one of the states involved. ILEAD USA Applications Available-“National Day of Application” November 1 The State Library continues its preparations to host ILEAD USA (Innovative Librarians Explore, Apply and Discover): The 21st Century Technology and Leadership Skills Institute for the States. This continuing education initiative will be held at the University of Illinois Springfield on March 25-28, June 17-20 and October 21-24, 2013. Our partner states in ILEAD USA are […]
A heartfelt dankeschön to the US Embassy in Berlin and the Zukunftwerkstatt for sponsoring my talks in Germany. The slides are here: For slides please Contact Michael
Shared with my by Professor Hobohm as I travel around Germany.
For those of you who already know me, I’m profoundly deaf and wear a cochlear implant and a hearing aid. For those of you who don’t–now you know! Many don’t, particularly if I wear my hair down. I talk quite normally thanks to the cochlear implant, and I hear well enough to “pass” for hearing. However, I struggle in some situations, and people get frustrated and say, “Never mind, it wasn’t important,” or assume I’m stupid or rude. Deafness is an invisible disability. It’s easy to remember to make sure that there are ramps and elevators for people using crutches […]
A big shout out to the incredible staff of VPL for the great visit I had yesterday. I was invited by library administration to do a public library futures presentation for staff. There are some very exciting things happening at this library and I learned a lot from everyone I talked to. I repeated the talk in the afternoon for more staff and folks from nearby libraries. Thanks to all for such a warm welcome to Canada. For slides please Contact Michael
The most democratic book project I know is about to relaunch – Here is an article I wrote for the German library magazine BUB as member of the Zukunftentwicklers network – With a few corrections because a lot has happened with Unglue.it since the deadline: What is crowd funding and what does it mean to unglue? To unglue a book means that you buy the rights to the book and then pass them on by giving the book to the world for free to read in any e-book format and on any device – without DRM or time restrictions under a creative commons license. […]
Super cool article by Patricia Martin at Huffingtom Post. So glad to meet here at #rsq12 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-martin/libraries-digital-age_b_1942610.html‘ Until recently, public libraries had little reason to innovate. Then Google arrived. More disruptive technologies followed, causing an identity crisis for librarians. Now the profession is re-thinking its purpose — a quest that lured a gathering of 350 eager librarians to Telluride, Colorado recently for the R-Squared (Risk and Reward) Conference. As I circulated, knots of librarians huddled to share ideas and solutions. If there was a common thread it was the need to understand the increasingly complex lives of customers. Pre-Internet, a library […]