free the information!
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Value in the online world
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008I’ve been thinking a lot about how we value online things in light of a few interesting posts I’ve read recently. The first was Walt Crawford’s post about some negative reactions people had to his charging money for the electronic version of his book. One critic wrote:
But seriously, Walt, $29.50 for a paperback is bad [...]
If you haven’t heard of it, it’s new to you!
Sunday, June 8th, 2008I don’t write much on this blog about the gadgets and applications I use, but I’ve recently started using several things that I thought people might want to know about and try for themselves (if they don’t know about them already). I often assume that everyone already knows about the things I’ve discovered, but after [...]
Followup on Is this how we encourage people to contribute?
Thursday, May 15th, 2008I’ve been thinking a lot about the discussion last week about speaking, being compensated for speaking, transparency, the profession and it’s (perhaps?) inferiority complex, and so much more. Everyone contributed such unique and interesting perspectives, some I agree with, some I don’t, some that made me change my perspective a bit. We’ve all had different [...]
31 Day Comment Challenge: Days 2-7
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008In case you were wondering, I haven’t given up on the comment challenge! I’ve just been rather involved in the comment storm that’s taking place on my blog right now.
I definitely didn’t do all of these activities “by the book” but my goal with this is really to be a better blog citizen and think [...]
Is this how we encourage people to contribute?
Monday, May 5th, 2008A person I’m friendly with in California wrote me last night asking for advice about a speaking gig he just got. He’s pretty new to the speaking thing (though he is excellent) and wants to grow his reputation as a speaker, but also doesn’t get funding from his institution for professional development:
I got accepted to [...]
Loex 2008 goes online!
Monday, April 28th, 2008I got this email about LOEX 2008 Encore from Catherine Pellegrino at Saint Mary’s College and wanted to spread the word:
The annual LOEX conference is trying something new as an experiment this year: three of their breakout sessions will be presented as live, interactive webcasts a few weeks after the conference: http://www.loexconference.org/2008/virtualsessions.htm
I think this is [...]
Passion Quilt – Share
Monday, April 28th, 2008While I didn’t get tagged yet, the passion quilt meme really spoke to me. For this meme, you’re supposed to post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about.
Here’s mine:
Original image
[...]
ACRL’s FREE Webcast (for members)
Sunday, March 9th, 2008I was thrilled to hear last week about ACRL’s decision to start offering some free Webcasts for members. This is something that many people have suggested to ACRL in the past and I’m happy to see that the organization is starting to respond:
Join us on Wednesday, April 2, from 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CDT [...]
Getting out of a rut
Sunday, February 17th, 2008Since our Coordinator of Public Services left, I’ve been the liaison to the social sciences along with being the liaison to the School of Graduate Studies (whose programs are all online). That means that I’m basically the liaison to over 2/3 of the Norwich population, but it made good sense because of my strong background [...]
My FAQ and the expert versus the hive
Sunday, February 10th, 2008In the past two weeks, I’ve received around 10 emails asking for my advice on various topics. Sometimes these are questions that have easy answers. Some are asking for more involved advice that I’m happy to offer. Others are asking for things that would require an unreasonable amount of time and effort on my part. [...]
Flu trumps blogging (and pretty much everything else)
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008I probably owe a lot of people emails and I’ve been wanting to write up my tech trends and talk about some of the cool things I learned at the OLA Superconference last week. Unfortunately, I’ve come down with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had, which has turned me into a coughing, [...]
Getting ready for Building the Social Library Online
Saturday, January 19th, 2008Our classroom!
Originally uploaded by librarianmer
On Wednesday, the class I’m teaching for San Jose State University begins. It’s the first for-credit graduate-level course I’ve ever taught, so I’m really excited about it (and a little nervous). I spent the Fall developing the classroom and spent winter [...]
We have wiki!
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008Library Research Guides wiki
Originally uploaded by librarianmer
A while back, I wrote about the challenges I had in finding the right platform for our subject guides. Well, I’m pleased to say that I just linked to our subject guides from the front page of the library [...]
Don’t take what you know for granted
Friday, January 4th, 2008As liaison to all of the distance learning programs at our University, I frequently deal with our Interlibrary Loan Librarian. We can’t do traditional book interlibrary loan with our distance learners because the loan times do not allow sufficient time for us to ship the materials to the student and for the student to consult [...]
LIS Jobs Forums
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008Now it can be told! Rachel Singer Gordon’s been working on this terrific project: LISJobs Forums, a series of forums for librarians to share ideas and experiences related to career development. Here’s an excerpt from the press release on Rachel’s blog:
LISjobs.com, the largest free library career portal on the Internet, is pleased to announce [...]
Pew report on Information Searches That Solve Problems
Sunday, December 30th, 2007The Pew Internet and American Life project just released a report about how people access information to solve problems. While I’ve only had the chance to skim it so far, it’s definitely a report that will be of interest to those of us in libraries and related information professions.
They asked 2,796 respondents if they’d [...]
Code4Lib Journal Launches!
Monday, December 24th, 2007I am so pleased that The Code4Lib Journal’s first issue is out. The projects described are really interesting and what I like most is that they include an explanation of how they did it (with code!). Far too often, you read articles about a library-related project that really don’t give you any idea how it [...]
A personal ad for open source project help
Monday, December 24th, 2007For several years, I have used Feed2JS. It’s a great tool that makes it easy to display an RSS feed on any web page and to style the content to match the page. Many libraries are using Feed2JS on their own websites; some host it on their own server (that’s what I do), while others [...]
Sharing the bad stuff, learning from failures
Sunday, December 16th, 2007There are some libraries that most of us think must be the best places to work ever because of the innovation that goes on there. And in some cases, we may be right. But not always. I think we often assume that places that have good people are good places to work, and that doesn’t [...]
Want to teach some LIS students about social software?
Saturday, December 15th, 2007Starting in January, I’ll be teaching an online class on social software at San Jose State University. I am beyond excited about it! I’m really interested in having guest speakers in the class; people at libraries that are doing a lot with social software and can discuss the applications at their library as well as [...]
« Previous Entries Next Entries »