Lindy shared her project for LIS5313 with me via email and I asked her to share her study with TTW readers. Thanks Lindy! Michael Recently, I read a post from Mashable.com about Twitter’s staggering growth in 2008: Twitter grew 752 percent in 2008 for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December! What does this mean for libraries? As Twittermania spreads, more and more of their patrons are will use it to communicate, socialize and make connections. As such, libraries should see the unlimited potential Twitter can have to connect them to their community and beyond. Libraries must adjust […]
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Kay wrote a paper for LIS768 on the Cluetrain ten years later. She graciously allowed me to post an edit here. Thanks Kay! Michael Today’s economic situation would seemingly make libraries indispensible. Yet with budget cuts, many libraries are threatened with cut backs and closings. The natural reaction, based on fear, would be to go into preservation mode. Instead, libraries need to be moving into innovation mode, viewing this time as a chance to move ahead and connect with the public that hasn’t been using them. The disenfranchised public wants to know how the library will be relevant to them […]
In Michael’s Library 2.0 class, I had the opportunity to read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and I wrote up the lessons I thought libraries could take from it as they seek to better themselves in a Library 2.0 world. Here’s the condensed, bloggy version of what I took away. Lesson one: The Aeron chair. This chair was break aesthetically from how office chairs had always looked, but despite some initial outside skepticism, the design team persevered because they knew they had created a great project; the chair came to be the company’s biggest seller. Similarly for libraries, it is important […]
I’m a big follower of library websites. They are virtual representations of their physical presence and they also say a lot about a library’s innovation (or lack thereof). All this summer I investigated different libraries to see what they were doing and how they were designing their online presences as I redesigned the website for my employer, the A.C. Buehler Library at Elmhurst College. But it would have been great to know that I could have gone straight to one location to look at a plethora of library websites instead of Googling sites I knew of. Well – that one […]
I recently had a Facebook conversation with Jeff Dawson, director of the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. I realized in our back and forth that his experience with creating and extending online presense for his library was the makings for a HOT TTW guest post: For example, the entire town knew I went to PLA (I think I left town as you were coming in… ). We are now running 2 blogs out of LPL, Blogging LPL is sustaining an average of roughly 3,000 hits a month and rising (I know my mom isn’t the only one looking […]
Anthony Andros wrote this paper for LIS701 at Dominican in Fall 2006. He agreed to post an shorter version here. Library 2.0: Pandemic or Panacea? An Exploration of Old Wine in a New Bottle by: Anthony Andros T.S. Eliot said that, “Television…is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.” Technology has indeed found a way to influence civilization in both positive and negative ways. Why is it that twenty-first century Americans have innumerable technologies and novelties to conserve time and effort, yet we all […]
It’s my belief that library users are expecting more from their web browsing experience. I’m not talking social networks, I’m talking interactive web design. These users are used to websites that allow for dynamically changing content (content that may not require a new page to load) and for a feeling of interactivity with the page. Dynamic content shifts on the page, animates, and morphs into something it wasn’t previously. Let’s look at some examples: Jeep: The rectangular information boxes nicely animate in and out upon click of the left or right arrows allowing for new information to nicely slide in […]
Some say that IM is on the verge of extinction and that forging into such territory for virtual reference so late in the game is a waste of a library’s energy. You can surely count me as one of those who agrees with that statement. I predict, as do many others, that virtual reference needs to fit in users’ pockets – in their cell phone. We need to look at the trends happening now (according to PEW, 2006): -47% can’t live without their cell phones -35% use SMS and 13% would like it added to their features The preceding stats […]
Maybe most libraries think about it differently, but Darien Library is sending more staff members to Los Angeles for BookExpo America, the majority of whom will be Circulation staff, two of them part-time, than to any other conference this year. It’s a major commitment on our part, but for nearly all our staff, this is the most important event of the year. They love it! Now I wouldn’t expect many east coast libraries to follow suit, but how many libraries out there will be sending part-time OR even full-time Circ staff to BookExpo, and when it comes east next year, […]
Dominican GSLS Student Katharine Johnson writes: Last weekend I had the pleasure of joining LISSA (Dominican University’s library student group) for a tour of Loyola University’s new Information Commons located on their Lake Shore Campus. In short, the place is incredible. A bookless extension of their library, whoa! Three floors of computer terminals, many of which are located on long tables to encourage group study and/or spreading out all your books. Tall ceilings, bright work spaces, fully wired, completely green, and a breathtaking frozen-lake view. The first two floors encourage discussion among students, the third floor is considered the quiet […]