Categories TTW Ephemera

“Being a good, innovative librarian means taking a humanistic stance toward policy, decision-making, and experimentation. It means focusing on the heart.” Michael Stephens, The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change “Being a good, innovative librarian means taking a humanistic stance toward policy, decision-making, and experimentation. It means focusing on the heart.” Michael Stephens, The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change

Shared with me via email is the response from a university library who would not make an exception for an online student who needed an article and who was without access from home and at work due to unforeseen circumstances: The Library policy states that the Library will not send an article if the article can be accessed online. As you may be aware of that many of our patrons have no access to computer or internet from home, so we are unable to make exceptions to anyone for such kind of requests. I’m trying to understand what this means […]

Please read: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/09/harrisburg Just posted this comment: I use social tools extensively in my teaching and interaction with students. From Facebook office hours to a WordPress/BuddyPress course site developed with an outstanding grad student, I would virtually have my hands tied during this “experiment.” I agree with commenters above: how about a week without phone service so faculty would have to walk across campus to chat with a colleague or ask a question. Or shut down access to library databases for a week and rely on the library’s print collection for resources. I’m much more interested in the connected campus […]

Our academic library in New York started a Netflix subscription last Fall. We started out with one account allowing for the maximum number of DVDs, 8 at a time. By the middle of Spring semester, we had two accounts. The New Media professor took over the prior, and we made the new one for all other courses. New Media requires many movies for students to watch. Our library has a very limited budget when it comes to film purchasing, especially popular titles. Netflix has saved us an enormous amount of money (around $3,000) by allowing the physical rentals as well […]

Aaron Schmidt writes: Taking A Pass On Passivity We need to stop focusing on giving away free content and do something different—something no other institution, civic or commercial, is doing. This is where user experience and design thinking come into play. We spend a fair amount of time idly discussing what the future will hold. But this is a fool’s errand. It is this passivity that got us squeezed out of the containerless content game in the first place. Our time would be better spent observing the core needs of our communities and thinking of exciting ways to meet them. […]

From an email: I am a graduate student in the Dept. of Library & Information Science, National Taiwan University. I am writing to you because I read your article and thus understand that you had researched Delicious.com before. I’m currently doing my thesis research on Delicious users’ social relations and tagging behaviors. I am now on the stage of collecting data from Delicious user. Would you please fill out my questionnaire if you are currently using Delicious? It may take you approximately 20-30 minutes to complete the questionnaire. I would highly appreciate if you could also forward this questionnaire to […]

From Michael: Christoph Deeg of the Zukunftwerkstatt in Germany agreed to do a guest post for me outlining the origins and philosophies of this group. I spent an incredible day with the group in Berlin – and learned so much from them.  I was honored to be asked to participate as a founding member last March and am pleased Christoph agreed to write for TTW – in English! The Zukunftwerkstatt Kultur- und Wissensvermittlung e.V. is a non-profit-organisation that brings people together who are active in public institutions or private enterprises dealing with future possibilities of mediating of cultural and scientific […]

Last night, we held the first Teen After Hours event at the Portland Public Library.  This program was a collaboration between the library and Officer Ray Ruby of the Portland Police Department. All in all, it was a great success.  We played video games, ate pizza, had a massive hide and seek game, and just enjoyed life.  It’s the best example of what I’m calling the teen “un-program”.  With the teen un-program, you have a program with lots of different stuff, you open it up to teens, and…well, just watch the video to see what happens. I can’t wait until […]