Archive for May, 2006

Book trumps blogging

Monday, May 29th, 2006

My book is due in just over a month. This is a fact that is causing me a fair amount of anxiety. I know I’ll get it done in time, but will it be good? I don’t know. Roy Tennant, trying to be nice and give me advice a while back, [...]

On ALA 2.0 Bootcamp and free access to online learning

Friday, May 26th, 2006

It’s been thrilling to see the growth of online educational opportunities for librarians. From OPAL, to SirsiDynix, to HigherEd BlogCon, to WebJunction, to podcasts, screencasts and countless blogs… there’s a lot of great free online educational content out there! Learning to be a tech-savvy, user-centered 21st century librarian doesn’t need to cost money [...]

Internet Librarian — Hoorah!

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

I know everyone has already written about Internet Librarian, but I took two days off for my birthday, which I ended up spending getting mauled by lambs. Yes, you heard me. Vicious dress-eating lambs. Ok, maybe they weren’t vicious, but they did try to eat my dress! I also had the [...]

Facebook at Bennington’s Crossett Library

Monday, May 22nd, 2006

Since posting about social networking software almost 2 weeks ago, I have been corresponding with Oceana Wilson of the Crossett Library at Bennington College. They are the library that has been soliciting feedback from students on Facebook about what materials they’d like the library to order. Oceana and I are both curious about [...]

Request from a friend

Monday, May 22nd, 2006

Doug Geiger, a reader of Information Wants to be Free whom I’ve been IM-ing with since last year, IM-ed and asked if I would post this request my blog. While I don’t usually advertise things on here, I can’t imagine having to deal with medical expenses on top of the physical and psychological pain [...]

You may not be the person you think you are

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

We all have a story of our life in our heads that informs who we think we are and what we think we are capable of. This story is based on experiences in our lives — successes, failures, traumas, and other people’s expectations. Often we will construct our story based only on certain [...]

testing

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

just showing vt librarians how to blog! So easy!

My first podcast

Friday, May 12th, 2006

I’m not sure why I didn’t mention this earlier (probably out of sheer embarassment – I hate my voice), but I recorded my first podcast last week. Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens asked me to do a podcast on Librarian 2.0 for their L2 Bootcamp. I must say that I was a little [...]

Libraries in Social Networking Software

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

I’ve been listening and quietly taking in all of the talk about social networking software and the library’s place (if any) in that software. I’ve raised a few questions on e-mail lists about whether or not we are invading our patrons’ space by building presence in MySpace and Facebook (perhaps) and whether it is [...]

John Iliff (1953-2006) – an inspiration

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

This morning when I saw Karen’s post that John Iliff had passed away, my first thought was “it has to be some other John Iliff.” The John Iliff I know is too full of energy and enthusiasm to die. John Iliff and I exchanged several e-mails last week. John Iliff was just [...]

Casey Bisson speaks! We all should listen.

Monday, May 8th, 2006

As I was working on the book and it started getting longer and longer… and longer, it became clear to me that I was going to have to cut some topics that I’d planned to cover. My book proposal included a few things that one may not define as social software but that I [...]

Information Literacy Online: If you build it… will they come?

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Before I started my job, there were no instructional materials provided to online students on how to use the library resources (there also was no distance learning librarian to create instructional materials). Not surprisingly, there were lots of students e-mailing the library every week with access problems and research questions. Students in certain [...]