The new issue of LJ Net Connect is out! What started as a blog post here on Tame the Web as Libraries Doing Cool Things with iPods is now “The iPod Experiments.” This says a lot to me about the crossover between LIS blogging and reporting here in library land. In fact, the genesis was the original post at engadget about South Huntington’s iPod Shuffles! Thanks to Joe and Ken at South Huntington PL for talking to me about their ground-breaking sevice! Thanks to Brian Kenney at LJ for being so cool about my fascination with iPods in Libraries. Keep […]
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This is TTW’s 500th entry since March 2004! To give it some substance: Three Things that are HOT right now: Libraries that get the balance between technology, space and people and plan accordingly to meet the needs of all who seek information. Librarians who experiment with new techie stuff and report to the LIS Blogosphere how it goes. (That’s a big piece of what a learning community is all about) Technologies that are used as tools, not like carnival attractions in our organizations!
I was sad to realize PLA and CIL are scheduled for the same time next year! I just got a mailing from PLA and went to enter the dates in iCal – and OH! I know plans are made for such big conferences years in advance… but this is too bad for folks that might want to attend both!
This is an important one…one to ponder… http://scanblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/does-non-dynamic-library-have-future.html But it’s not just about giving people what they want. Leadership is about creating a vision that you can share with the board, with elected officials and business people, with the library’s clients, and most of all, with the library staff. (One of our side discussions during this meeting was about the importance of not blaming the staff for not being willing to change. If the leaders cannot explain the change and provide a reason for it, the problem lies not with the staff, but with their leaders.) Thus, the importance of […]
An e-mail this am from Chris Kupec: “I’m going to an OverDrive demo today. I’ll ask the rep what she thinks of this: iPodlounge: Apple takes lead in flash market, continues domination During its second quarter conference call with press and analysts, Apple revealed that the iPod shuffle was the No. 1 selling flash-based MP3 player worldwide in February with 43 percent market share. The iPod shuffle is expected to be the top-selling flash player in the coming months, but NPD Techworld (which calculates the sales numbers) has not yet released reports for March. Apple?s iTunes Music Store remains the […]
http://homepage.mac.com/ckupec/iblog/C1161074488/E452907398/index.html Chris is doing some cool stuff with iTunes at his library. This post includes a letter to Audible. His points: The details need to be addressed carefully, but it boils down to this: 1. We want to offer digital audiobooks to our patrons. 2. We do not want to circulate any devices. The patrons must provide their own. 3. We want the patrons to come into the library, and have the staff load patron devices. 4. We want the library to own the files locally, on a local storage device, e.g., when our Internet service is slow, we do […]
Training IM Last week I did some IM Training for some new and seasoned staff who will be working at SJCPL Service areas that use IM (Reference and AV) to answer questions. It was a good exercise and now I see more clearly how to set up this type of training. I wanted them to get screenames first, then chat with each other and then tackle some exercises. I did all the things a good trainer should do: checked my equipment, tested the computers and preppeed the room and handouts. What I didn’t count on was having issue with logging […]
http://www.ncpl.info/departments/reference/im.htm From colleague and workshop participant Stephen Boggs, who is director of New Carlisle Public Library in New Carlisle, IN (at the far west reaches of my county), we get a report of what he’s doing at his library since the “Reinventing Libraries Workshop” This rocks my world. So far I have set-up three additional IM accounts for the library. Information about or screen names is posted on our main web page @ www.ncpl.info The accounts were fairly easy to establish, though I have switched to a program called PSI to handle all three accounts instead of managing three different […]
http://www.kellistaley.com/2005/04/our-multiple-online-personalities.html Kelli Staley writes about the IM experience at Lansing PL, and shares some cool stuff about how it all works: How does our staff like this setup? They like the the separate names. The Teen Dept. librarian said she gets a lot of young adult reader’s advisory inquiries which our Reference desk would be unable to answer. Her IM traffic seems to pick up after she booktalks at the high school. Students will remember parts of what she said, and then inquire about the title. It also helps to get an idea of the age of the patron right […]
Hey – now you can tell if the SJCPL IM Reference service is online or not! We were inspired by Lansing! http://www.libraryforlife.org/asksjcpl/asksjcpl.html Thanks Maire!