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Archive for October, 2005
New communities, physical and virtual
Sunday, October 30th, 2005For background, this post was inspired by Laura’s (of lis.dom) excellent post on the uses of the biblioblogosphere, which was in response to posts by Mark Linder, Angel, and Joy Moll. It’s now been almost three months since Adam and I moved to Vermont and since I started my job at Norwich (note that I [...]
Tick marks or high tech?
Friday, October 28th, 2005I have a problem remembering to keep track of my reference transactions on the little clipboard we keep at the reference desk. My office is three floors above where the reference desk is and, more often than not, I am answering reference questions from my desk (or even from home). By the time I get [...]
Thanks a lot Wilma
Wednesday, October 26th, 2005So I left Florida to get away from the hurricanes… … but Hurricane Wilma was nice enough to make a little visit to Vermont. We got about 16 inches of snow!!! IN OCTOBER!!! (Jessamyn, you are so lucky to be in California right now!) Our power was out for about 17 hours, which is really [...]
Social Bookmarking survey
Thursday, October 20th, 2005This morning, I had an email from Djoeke van de Klomp, the Community Manager of blinklist.com (which I hadn’t used prior to this, but it looks pretty cool!). She is doing a survey on social bookmarking: I’m currently doing a survey to attempt to figure out which are the key features that users of social [...]
How to slack in peace
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005For those of you in the Northeast who have been dealing with almost 2 weeks of continuous rain, here’s something that definitely brightened my day and made me laugh my head off. A Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette last week had some excellent advice for slackers like me: Always carry a manilla folder with you everywhere [...]
Public speaking and wiki-evangelizing
Sunday, October 16th, 2005I am not one of those people — like Steven Cohen or Jessamyn — who is very comfortable giving talks. No matter how well I know the material, I still get insanely nervous when I have to get up in front of people to talk. I’ve never had a talk go badly, but it doesn’t [...]
Screencasting social software
Sunday, October 16th, 2005Brian Lamb, one of my favorite Ed-Tech people and wiki-evangelists, has created a terrific screencast about blogs and their use in education (note: it’s a big file and you must have Quicktime to watch it). He also has a companion wiki which is shown in the screencast. Watching the screencast made me think about how [...]
When is a wiki not a wiki?
Sunday, October 16th, 2005Or does using a specific type of software necessarily define the product? I was as excited as everyone else when I heard that the WorldCat wiki was live in Open WorldCat and that people could start adding reviews, tables of contents, and other notes on books. It will add tremendous value to WorldCat! How easy [...]
New-ish wiki on the block!
Thursday, October 13th, 2005Well, it’s new to me at least! It’s always exciting for me to see librarians using wikis to share information. The fabulous folks at Librarians with class pointed out the Library Instruction Wiki, which was created by the Oregon Library Association’s Library Instruction Roundtable. It has the very wiki-propriate slogan “… stop reinventing the wheel…” [...]
WebCT and Blackboard are merging!
Wednesday, October 12th, 2005The big buzz on my campus (and probably many others) is that Blackboard is buying WebCT. Here’s a snippet from a very long press release at PRNewswire: The merger of Blackboard and WebCT marks a major milestone in the build-out of networked learning environments by colleges, universities, schools and other education providers. It creates a [...]
Foliage podcasts!
Saturday, October 8th, 2005It’s rare that I can sneakVermont into a discussion about technology, but today I have the perfect excuse! In today’s Barre Montpelier Times Argus (originally in the New York Times) I read an article called Podcast for your leaf-peeping?. Yankee Magazine has created weekly podcasts about the foliage, including foliage forecasts, music, narrated driving tours [...]
Librarians in Academia: Faculty or Support Staff?
Saturday, October 8th, 2005There’s been a lot of talk about the place of librarians in academia. It’s something I thought about a great deal in the during the job search as I applied for tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions. I would have been happy with either position since I’m going to publish and speak regardless of whether or not [...]
Library Success Wiki in SLJ!
Thursday, October 6th, 2005Wow, this is some month for me! Library Journal and School Library Journal! This month, the Library Success Wiki is featuerd as SLJ’s Website of the Month. It’s a terrific, concise piece and it really promotes the wiki as something school librarians should contribute to. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like school librarians are [...]
Leaving the paper calendar world?
Thursday, October 6th, 2005I got our Virtual Private Server all set up at work so now I can get to the business of actually putting up webby things. I’d really love to create some sort of Staff Intranet where we can post announcements and info so that our email boxes don’t become clogged with them. I was thinking [...]
MPOW: two month progress report
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005I’m nearly two months into my job as a Distance Learning Librarian. When I think back to what my dream job was in library school, I am shocked by how close my reality fits the dream (other than the fact that Michael Stephens, Jessamyn West and all my other favorite bloggers don’t work with me). [...]
What in the world is Web 2.0?
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005This is not a term I am particularly fond of simply for the fact that no two people seem to define it in the same way. Also, call me a curmudgeon, but I just don’t like buzz words. Since I categorically refuse to use a term I can’t clearly define, I set out to learn [...]
Why blog?
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005I used to blog a lot more than I do now. I was unemployed and had a lot of free time. Now that I have a job and a house and other committments, I had to ask myself why should I continue blogging? Is it worth the time it takes? The answer I came up [...]
Do you know any movers or shakers?
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005I certainly know a few. It’s time to nominate the librarians who inspire you, who create change, and/or who do great things at their library. Check out what Marylaine Block wrote about the Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers issue: NOTE: It’s time once again for nominations for Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers issue. Please participate [...]
Bloggers in LJ
Sunday, October 2nd, 2005I was excited to see that the Bloggers Roundtable I did with several other fabulous librarian bloggers finally made its way into Library Journal. It’s a great article, but part of me was disappointed that it didn’t capture the synergy that was going on in that room. It was a truly amazing, enlightening, and inspiring [...]
