Hi Everyone, my name is Michael Colford, and I am the on the Senior Management Team of the Boston Public Library in charge of Regional Services. When Michael asked me to guest blog on Tame the Web, I was both surprised and honored. I’ve done a fair bit of blogging, but not a whole lot in the library profession. That said, in my position at the BPL, I do a whole lot of talking up of using technology in the support of public service, and meeting users where they are using Social Networking and other Library 2.0 tools. I thought […]
Categories Engaging Library Users
156 posts
Brian Want, at the Wanted Librarian, writes: http://thewantedlibrarian.typepad.com/thewantedlibrarian/2007/04/libraries_not_a.html In the hunt for an engaging weekend activity, my friend Bradley and I decided to celebrate Earth Day and attend Chicago’s first annual Green Festival (not affiliated with the political party) at McCormick Place. What a fun, inspiring, educational, and network-oriented event! In addition to speakers and other special programming, the Green Festival brought hundreds of exhibitors under one roof, including publishers, socially responsible builders/investors, organic/veggie food vendors, eco-travel agencies, activist organizations, green media outlets, and lots more. There was so much INFORMATION being exchanged and so many people meeting one another, […]
“Society has determined what the library of the past has been, and it is society that will determine what the library of the future shall be.” Jesse Shera, The Foundations of Education for Librarianship Via the Social Customer Manifesto: http://www.socialcustomer.com/2007/04/from_transactio.html Interesting piece that supports many of the statements we’ve been discussing. The Social library is a “shop” as well. …a shop which ignores the attributes of 2.0 is a shop with a limited shelf life. Why? 1. Consumers want to co-create. If your shop site doesn’t allow the community of users to share their ideas about what it should sell, […]
George from http://archdale.blogspot.com writes: Michael, Just wanted to point you to the video editing contest that our Teen Corner is having for National Library Week. We just debuted a Teen area with furniture, shelving and 4 computers with video editing software and dvd burners. http://rcplteencorner.blogspot.com/2007/03/teen-video-contest.html Thanks George! I also see that the library had a “Make a Movie Night” presented by the teen advisory board. This is good on many levels: The library has technologies the teens may want to use to create content (remember those Pew numbers?) and a space just for them. The TAB is actively working to […]
One of my students shared this URL with our class: http://www.lapl.org/ya/. Take a look. It’s engaging and entertaining. I like the iPod earbuds and cell phone with images graphics. Dig a little deeper for discussion, book reviews and links out to some refreshingly frank and useful sites. A few more clicks led me too http://games.lapl.org/ — maybe I’ve missed coverage of this but it was new to me. In the tradition of The DaVinci Code, it’s a library adventure game! Here’s a shot: Well done LAPL!
By Michael Casey & Michael Stephens What prevents a library from being transparent? Barriers. Roadblocks. Inability to change. The culture of perfect. The transparent library contains three key elements: open communication, adapting to change, and scanning the horizon. We’ll explore these ideas and offer solutions for those struggling with new models of service, technology, and a decidedly opaque climate. The web has changed the old landscape of top-down decisions. “As the web becomes the greatest word-of-mouth amplifier in history, consumers learn to trust peers more and companies less,” said Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail. “And as the same […]
staff Originally uploaded by teens_libraryloft. I’ve had fun following some libraries that did innovative programs and such for Teen Tech Week. If you didn’t put it on your schedule, plan ahead for next year. Gaming, explorations of technology, recording podcasts or videocasts are all fun things to do to engage young people. And just look at those smiling PLCMCV staff!
Don’t miss Brian Kenney’s new editorial at School Library Journal: Back when many of us signed up for this librarian gig, we were told that “keeping up” was a vital part of the job. That meant reading publications like SLJ, knowing what was being published in your field, tracking database content, while keeping abreast of your users’ world, whether that was elementary education or pharmacology. Now it’s all changed. We still need to read our professional publications (in some format or other) and keep current with our users’ lives. But we also need to be active participants in the new […]
http://www.bookswim.com/temp_index.php Jeff up in TC alerts me to this post at http://rossnotes.com/archives/2007/01/02/how-i-would-run-a-library-system/ How I Would Run a Library System: In a word: Netflix. The queue system is a perfect fit for books, maybe even a better fit than it is for movies. People will pay money for this service(perhaps not $20 a month). Removing unpopular books from shelves isn’t such a bad idea, but keep them somewhere, available for circulation. Stick a URL on the inside cover of every book that goes to an online discussion board for that book. Either after check-in or a week after check-out, email the […]
P1010002 Originally uploaded by teens_libraryloft. This is great — the teen librarians glide around the library…