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 […]
Categories Accessibility
18 posts
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 […]
I am no longer reading the book 1493 by Charles Mann (see my previous post about Mann’s earlier book, 1491, here). I was reading it but it just disappeared from my iPad. I had downloaded it via Overdrive from my local public library. My two-week loan period is over, the book vanished, and I am now back on the waiting list. I am at a point in my life where I just don’t have time to read for fun. I just don’t have time to curl up with books any more. Young children, work responsibilities, side projects, homeownership, and the […]
Some big news. Magazines are now included in Google Book Search: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/search-and-find-magazines-on-google.html Today, we’re announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony. Are you a baseball history fanatic? Try a search for [hank aaron pursuing babe ruth’s record] on Google Book Search. You’ll find a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Hank Aaron, written as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s original record for career home runs. You can read the article in full color and in its original context, […]
“We’re seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs,” notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. IT division of Publicis Groupe, a global advertising conglomerate. There are so many requests that Plavin now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. — nearly a quarter of all Publicis’ U.S. PCs. http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/21/17FE-macs-in-business_1.html Dominican now supports faculty requesting either a Mac or PC for their offices. And anecdotally I heard that 40% of our incoming students university wide have Macs. 🙂
Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting and speaking at the new Loyola University Information Commons on the campus of Loyola University just north of Chicago. It was a blustery, rainy cold day along the lake, but the space and the library folk were warm and inviting. Before the visit, I checked out the Web site for the Commons, eager to read about the project. Read the rest here: http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2008/04/student-centered-digital-learning-at-loyolas-information-commons.html
http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2007/11/convenience.html This is golden: In the good old days (prior to 1994) many of our customers had to come to us. We were the only game in town. But I’m afraid that our prior near-monopoly on information services made some of us a bit too comfortable. We were able to get away with clunky systems, restrictive policies, and unfriendly staff. Customers didn’t have much of a choice. Well, those days are gone, and they’re not coming back. That doesn’t mean libraries don’t have a lot to offer, but it does mean we have to be much more aware of the […]
Hey Jude writes at http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/let-me-tell-you-about-ning-and-the-new-bonus/ Steve Hargadon writes about the new look Ning! – and how current education users can request to have advertising removed. As a member of the FlatClassroom Project, Classroom 2.0, The Global Education Collaborative, Library 2.0, NextGen Teachers, School 2.0, Stop Cyberbullying, Edublogger World, and lots more. I’m not active really, just drop by sometimes – unless the group is project-based such as The Horizon Project and the Flat Classroom Project. I especially like the way we can use Ning! to introduce groups of new teachers to the world of robust social networking – sharing information, […]
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/530744,281NWS2.article An article by Angela Caputo gets me thinking about learning and libraries this morning, and frankly, I am a little scared: That’s the computer-access rule at the Sauk Village public library. And it’s drawing criticism from one local school board member who challenges the policy as another barrier to technology for some of the region’s poorest children. “Seventy-six percent of our kids are from poor families … Their parents can’t afford to buy technology, and they’re computer illiterate too,” said Marvin Perez, who sits on the Community Consolidated Schools District 168 board of education. “Why do you charge kids […]
Sharon Clapp from the Connecticut State Library comments on this post: https://tametheweb.com/2007/07/poor_new_mexico_state_library.html Right after I came aboard at the State Library in CT (just a couple of weeks before I ran my blogging workshop) last year, an edict came down from the higher-ups in state government reminding us that we may be monitored and that use of the computers and/or networks supplied by the state may not be used – even on breaks – to access personal email, to “surf” websites, etc. People who came to my blog workshop – having already been required to sign off on this internet […]