Archive for April, 2007

Well, I said yes.

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Last night, I got an e-mail asking if I’d like to join the LITA Top Technology Trends panel as one of their experts. And it didn’t take me more than 2 seconds to decide that I was going to say yes. Wow! What an honor to be included with such a distinguished group of professionals! [...]

If I just had 15 minutes each day

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Stephen Abram wrote a column for Information Outlook on Learning 2.0 called 15 Minutes a Day: A Personal Learning Management Strategy. So it got me thinking. If I had 15 minutes each day to keep up with technology and libraries’ use of technology, what would I do?
Here’s what I would suggest…
Keep up with just a [...]

DrupalEd is released

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

When we taught Five Weeks to a Social Library, we used Drupal and kind of had to hack it to make it work as a course management system. Too bad DrupalEd wasn’t out yet. But it is now!
The goal of this site is to create a flexible framework that allows for users to set up [...]

Congratulations Roy!

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

My good friend, Roy Tennant, has just accepted a sweet job at OCLC, and he didn’t even have to leave Northern CA! I don’t quite understand exactly what he’ll be doing there, but I know that anything he works on is going to be great. OCLC has been making some good hires lately and I [...]

CIL Reflections

Friday, April 20th, 2007

I got back home from Computers in Libraries yesterday afternoon. The sky was a beautiful blue (still is) and the weather finally convinced me that it might be possible to get my snow tires removed. What a nice change from the weather I’ve been experiencing in Arlington, VA and New York City over the past [...]

Early Impressions at CIL

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Meredith Farkas on Social Software

Originally uploaded by madinkbeard.

I did a lot of blogging at the last two major national conferences I attended. I decided this time, given that I’m giving so many talks, doing the book signing, etc., I would just kind of take things [...]

Airport delay-enabled mini-posts

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

My flight’s delayed until 2:20 (I’ve been here since 8:00 am) so I thought I’d blog a few things I’ve been wanting to mention but just haven’t had the time to write a substantial blog post about:
Sarah Houghton-Jan’s amazing Library Technology Report, Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries. Well, I can only assume it’s great [...]

Conference season begins!

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

And what a season it’s going to be! Last year, I gave my first conference talk ever at Computers in Libraries. Since then, I’ve given around 18 talks and I have 10 talks scheduled between now and the end of June. Insane! And it all starts Friday!
On Friday, I’ll be giving the keynote (another first!) [...]

Fun with Elsevier

Monday, April 9th, 2007

At my school, we used to subscribe to the Science Direct engineering package for our online engineering students. It worked well, but got very little use since most of the engineering classes do not require research. Last year, we were informed that Science Direct was getting rid of the package we were subscribed to and [...]

Who says memes are frivilous?

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

I just wanted to post a follow-up to the five non-library blogs meme started by Rachel Singer Gordon.
Thanks to people’s posts on the topic (see here for many of them), I have discovered a whole mess of new blogs to enjoy! Here’s a list of the ones that I’ve subscribed to because of the meme:

HorsePigCow [...]

We could be heroes

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Wow! I’m really shocked that people would name me as a biblioblogger hero, but am even more shocked that Dorothea Salo would actually start a meme (yes, you did it Dorothea!).
I don’t think I could possibly name just five bloggers who have influenced, inspired, challenged and educated me. I’ve learned something from every [...]

I am such a sheep!

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Doggles and I joined the Mac cult

Originally uploaded by librarianmer.

This week I have joined not one, but two cults. First, I went and bought a MacBook Pro. It was really about time. I have not been able to update Windows on my VAIO since November, [...]

What about Library Association 2.0?

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

One thing I have loved about the whole Library 2.0 movement is the push to stamp out the “but we’ve always done it this way” attitude. I am a strong believer in questioning the common wisdom. So often we do things because of tradition, not because it’s the best way to do it. I think [...]

Wishing it were an April Fools’ Day Prank

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Bad news, folks. Apparently the printer of my book screwed up big time and the book is going to have to be completely re-printed by another company. According to the Editor-in-Chief at Information Today Books, John Bryans, the cover is too dark and at least 60% of advance copies have defective laminate. They [...]