Categories Emerging Technology

http://curtisrogers.blogspot.com/2008/01/apple-store-amazing-customer-service.html Dr. Curtis Rogers just bought a MacBook (hooray!) and he describes the customer service at the Apple Store:  I kept on looking for her to walk me to the back of the store to the check out counter but that was not the case. Another guy came up and while she went to grab my new MacBook, he checked my ID so I would get the State Government discount and with a handheld device, processed the sale.  I NEVER moved! He swiped my card right there, I signed his handheld device and was good to go.  What a great […]

A big Thank You to the folks at Information Today for granting permission to me to reprint the articles I wrote as part of the “Tech Tips for Every Librarian” department, that Rachel Singer Gordon and I took turns writing in 2006 and 2007 for Computers in Libraries magazine. I enjoyed every one I wrote but was often sad that the immediacy of blogging and the opportunity to comment were lost because it was print-based. After 90 days, the rights to the content reverted to me. In preparing the new version of TTW, I wanted to make sure it was […]

Technology training in libraries is more important than ever. New tools and systems require new training and new methods of instruction. How many librarians have found themselves the “accidental” tech trainer for their organizations in recent years? Whether you chose the job, or the job chose you, you have work to do. Library staff and users look to their technology trainers as guides to new Web tools such as wikis and blogs–and we must meet the challenge. Last year at the Internet Librarian International Conference in London I presented with Rob Coers, an Internet training consultant from the Netherlands. We […]

Remember the wave of virtual reference talk a few years back? Remember how virtual reference services were supposed to change the very foundations of what we do? Remember how some librarians discovered that those systems required users to navigate into a slowly loading chat queue inside their browsers so you could send, or “push,” pages to them? Remember the price tag to participate in this type of service–let alone the money spent on training and promotion? Well, guess what? Libraries can use a newer method with the same results–any library, of any size, and for a very low cost that […]

Welcome to Tech Tips for Every Librarian, your monthly guide to cost-effective, easily implemented, and otherwise eminently doable technology solutions for your library. Yes, we said your library, and we do mean that! No matter how small, how isolated, or how short on staff or time or money you are. Tech Tips will contain technological solutions you can use. Recognizing that the majority of libraries are small libraries. Tech Tips will give everyone ideas for using technology for maximum impact–with minimum outlay. While writers about technology in libraries often make assumptions about your technological know-how and technical background (or just […]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071212/wr_nm/usa_language_dc;_ylt=AgOYbyVHpW3r39qm9oMK8YcjtBAF Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said “w00t” — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging. It’s like saying “yay,” the dictionary said. Remember these: Blog in 2004 Podcast in 2005