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Blog Brainstorming in South Jersey

http://www.sjrlc.org/web20/handouts/brainstorm.shtml I believe in the “wisdom of crowds” so I asked the folks at my blog workshops last week to brainstorm blogging best practices and implications. Peter Bromberg captured the debrief on a flip chart that he’s put up on the SJRLC site. And all of the handouts are here.

How about that Web Redesign?

Checkout this post at Library Garden for an interview with Eric Reiss: http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2006/06/dogmas-are-meant-to-be-broken.html 1. Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated. 2. Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be eliminated. 3. Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be eliminated.

Information is a Science

David Warlick writing brilliantly on social software and information: The rise of blogging, podcasting (and vodcasting), wikis, and the glue that ties them and much else together, RSS, more closely align with the video game view of information than the blook-reading and film-watching mode that is my information consumption and was the central part of my education. The information landscape is increasingly a place that we participate in, observing our experience, reflecting on what we observe, reporting it to the blogosphere, reading, reflecting, and writing some more, and constructing uniquely valuable content — along with the junk. Information flows through […]

Does IM Bite? Student Outreach Interns

Via http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2006/06/17/put-your-current-students-on-im-to-answer-your-prospective-students-questions/: Blogs are nice, but sometimes prospective students crave a bit more real-time interaction. When high school students want to ask a quick question about admission, student life or academic programs, chances are they prefer to get an answer right away. They won’t call your admission office (hey, you’ve never been introduced – and they love to spend time on the phone, but only with their friends). They might not email you (email is so yesterday and formal). That’s why you should offer them to IM (instant message) you. I know, I know, it might be a challenge to […]

Six trends driving the future of libraries

From Helene Blowers’ Library TechBytes: http://libtechbytes.blogspot.com/2006/07/six-trends-driving-future-of-libraries.html A great list from Wired inspires Helene Blowers to ponder the trends librarians should consider for the future. Here’s some thoughts of mine on a few of them. This post has been unpublished since early July — I missed it in my MT software! 1. People Power Are you ready for Generation C? For anyone and everyone creating content online? I’m reminded of this passage from “Among the Audience” in The Economist Last November, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 57% of American teenagers create content for the internet—from text to […]

TTW Mailbox: Teen Libs Need Our Help!

From Stephanie: Hi Michael! Teen librarians are in need of your help. Could you post something about what’s going on with DOPA? We need people to contact their representatives and prevent what is about to go into place. URGENT Action Needed: The ALA Washington Office has learned that the US House of Representatives may try to expedite passage of H.R. 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), TOMORROW, July 26th. The bill is moving forward as is, with no changes to the original language. PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE’S OFFICE TODAY and ask that he/she oppose HR 5319. The Capitol Switchboard […]

TTW Mailbox: IM Reference in Smaller Libraries

A question to Rachel and I about my FASTER IM piece in CIL: Hello Rachel and Michael, Thanks a lot for the fine IM FASTER article. If you have a second, I’d like to ask one question. You state, “Your work flow won’t suffer at all if you incorporate an IM application on one of your reference area computers; IM simply becomes part of the reference staff duties… The AskSJCPL service is staffed by the same librarians who work the telephone and public reference desk.” You refer to computers and librarians, plural. The majority of the time our reference desk […]

Peter Bromberg & Michael Stephens

Pete and Michael Originally uploaded by South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative. SJRLC Blog & RSS Workshops Peter really blew me away with his work on the ALA l2 course! Remember the L2 Manifesto? http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2006/05/thoughts-on-ala-bootcamp-l20-manifesto.html? Today I go to work with Peter, who is an incredible trainer, writer and library thinker in his own right, and a group of 40 or so librarians from South Jersey! What an incredible time!