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Archive for March, 2006
« Previous EntriesLibrary Success Wiki: An Update
Thursday, March 30th, 2006When I first started Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki in July 2005, I didn’t know how people would respond to it. Would they use it? Would they ignore it? I figured that if the worst thing that would happen is that they would ignore it, then it was worth doing. [...]
Why Google (or Ask or Yahoo!) is good for reference work
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006Google/Ask/Yahoo! is rarely the first place I will look for information when helping a student. If it’s a really current topic, I’ll try Academic Search Premiere and LexisNexis. If it’s something more scholarly and related to a specific subject, I will use subject databases, though I will usually try Academic Search Premiere as [...]
Wanna be in my book? Librarians needed.
Monday, March 27th, 2006For one chapter in my book on social software in libraries, I’m discussing how librarians can determine which tools are the best for their library and population. To that end, I’ve been interviewing folks who work in all different kinds of libraries (and with different populations) to offer their two cents on which social [...]
Planning a conference
Sunday, March 26th, 2006Jane Dysart writes a great post about the difficulties of scheduling and planning a conference in response to Walt Crawford’s criticism of CIL occurring at the same time as PLA. Hey, I surely don’t envy the job she has. I’m finding it stressful enough just to coordinate the people who are presenting for [...]
CIL: Impressions
Saturday, March 25th, 2006I feel like I’ve been run over by a train. In addition to being completely exhausted by the conference and waking up with a migraine, I seem to have come down with a bad cold on top of it all. But I’ll take feeling like this any day for the amazing time I [...]
CIL06 Day 3: The Future of Catalogs
Saturday, March 25th, 2006This session was PACKED! I came in with Dave King and we both had to sit on the floor. There aren’t too many folks I’d sit on the floor for, but Roy Tennant and Andrew Pace are definitely two of them.
Roy and Andrew both took the word OPAC out of [...]
CIL Day 3: Virtual Teaching Moments
Saturday, March 25th, 2006The Teaching Moment in Virtual Reference – Clara Hudson
Clara Hudson is a librarian at the University of Scranton.
When doing reference by phone e-mail and chat, we lose the visual cues we get at the reference desk. This is why communication skills are so important online and on the phone. On the [...]
CIL Day 2: Information Literacy and Instruction
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006How Basic is Basic? – Kathleen Stacy
She is talking about one-shot reference sessions. It was nice to see her say that it’s better to have the students come to a one-shot reference session without much of a plan than for them not to be brought at all. I’ve heard some people say “I [...]
CIL Day 2: Two Views on Educating Librarians
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006Presenters: Jeanne Holba Puacz (University of Illinois) and Lynn Westbrook (University of Texas)
So I’m not sure I understood what this session was going to be about. I thought it was about how to educate librarians, but apparently, I was way off.
Keeping Up To Date with Technology – Jeanne Holba Puacz
Technology changes so [...]
Wikis for Beginners, or NEWSFLASH! I did not suck!
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006So I did my wiki presentation and apparently I did not suck.
For those who attended the talk (or any other interested parties) you want to see the slides from the presentation visit http://meredith.wolfwater.com/cil06/. Thanks to Jessamyn for her slide template.
For more information on wikis, you can visit this talk I gave on my [...]
CIL Day 1: Building Community With IM
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006Participants: Amanda Etches-Johnson, Aaron Schmidt, and Michael Stephens
Why are we spending so much money on commercial software when we could just put an IM name online for our patrons?
There are 65 libraries currently providing IM on the Library Success Wiki.
Michael Surveyed a bunch of librarians on IM
50.5% are allowed to use IM for professional and [...]
CIL Day1: Reaching Out to Your Community
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006talk given by Tom Peters and Lori Bell of OPAL
OPAL stands for Online Programming for All Libraries. Lori used to be the head of the Illinois Talking Book Center. Hard to get people with limited mobility together for a book discussion, so they were looking for a way to do this online. [...]
CIL Day 1: Wikis in Action
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006Note: I’m going to put my own editorializing in italics to keep it separate.
Ok, so they said we wouldn’t be able to get a signal in the ballrooms, but low and behold I seem to be getting a good signal! Rock on!
Update: Ok, nevermind. Once they closed the doors I lost it. [...]
CIL2006 Here I come!
Monday, March 20th, 2006Tomorrow (very very early) morning Adam and I are hopping on a plane and heading to DC for Computers in Libraries. This is my first Computers in Libraries, so I’m really excited! It’s also my very first time doing any sort of speaking at a conference. I’m not too nervous, since if [...]
Congratulations all around!
Friday, March 17th, 2006This has been a crazy few weeks. So many exciting things going on and so many people I want to congratulate. First, I want to congratulate Chris Deweese on the birth of his beautiful baby girl Tess Isabel. Something like that really puts everything else into perspective. YAY!
Secondly, I [...]
HigherEd BlogCon is on the way!
Friday, March 17th, 2006In just a couple of weeks, HigherEd BlogCon will be starting! It will be going on all month on the HigherEd BlogCon blog and through several Webcasts. I encourage all of you to visit the HigherEd BlogCon blog and to subscribe to our RSS feed so you won’t miss any of the terrific [...]
Michael Golrick tries to do the impossible…
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006You’ve got to give the man credit.
It can’t be easy to try to explain ALA.
I’ve been embarassed to admit that I understand almost nothing about how ALA and the divisions, roundtables, offices, council, etc. fit together. When Michael Golrick said he was going to write some sort of ALA 101 [...]
It’s back! And now it’s official!
Friday, March 10th, 2006ALA 2006 New Orleans Wiki
I tried to get out… but they pulled me back in!
No, actually I was thrilled to have been contacted by Mary Ghikas, the Senior Associate Executive Director at ALA, about the possibility of ALA creating an official ALA New Orleans Wiki. After discussing it for a while, we decided that [...]
Buy This Book. Now!
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006The NextGen Librarian’s Survival Guide by Rachel Singer Gordon
If you’re a nextgen librarian, a new librarian, or someone who now or may one day be supervising nextgen librarians, you should run and order this book right now. I just got it in the mail last night and after looking at the Table of Contents, [...]
On Becoming the Change You Want to See
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006Other than perhaps being included in a blanket condemnation of “illiterate bloggers,” I never would have thought that I’d be so much as acknowledged by an incoming ALA President. Although she got my name wrong, it’s still nice to see that Leslie Burger is keeping up with the conversations in the blogosphere. And I [...]
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