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 surprised to …
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 at …
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 at NJLA. We …
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 programs — …
For almost a month I’ve been meaning to write about three great new blogs that came on the scene fairly recently, but the post somehow got lost in the suffle of life. Library Garden – I’m really excited to see the growth of collaborative blogs. Not that I don’t like following 155 things in Bloglines, …
Last November, I went to a meeting of Vermont colleges where we discussed doing more consortial activities. We broke up into groups to discuss different ideas and then reported to everyone at the meeting. One of the things we discussed in our group was the idea of skill-sharing. It is often the case in smaller …
In mid-May, I’m giving an hour-long talk at the Vermont Library Association’s Annual Conference about using social software in academic libraries. The majority of the population I’ll be talking to has not used any of these tools, so I’m trying to figure out what would be most valuable to talk about. I’m torn between providing …
After writing my last post, I started thinking that it really would be helpful to have a resource with information on self-promotion for new librarians. So I started one here on the Library Success Wiki. Stop by and add your knowledge to what could be a tremendous resource for new librarians. What do you wish …
I have been reading the discussions regarding “movers and shakers” and the “self-promoting elite” with great interest. See these posts (and many comments on the first two) at The Shifted Librarian, Walt at Random, Caveat Lector and The Liminal Librarian. I find it very interesting how a post about how libraries can keep the people …
If you haven’t taken a look at this terrific library marketing video from LIS students at the University of Pittsburgh, what are you waiting for? These students could teach experienced library marketing experts a thing or two about selling the library to young people.
I have been working since November to make HigherEd BlogCon a success. And whatdayaknow? I get the flu, just as the Library and Information Resources week begins. I have been feeling hella-bad since Monday and although I’m definitely a lot better, I’m still only at the level of having a really bad cold. So as …
I just wanted to let you all know that today is the first day of the Library and Information Resources track of HigherEd BlogCon. We’ve got a great schedule of presentations this week that cover a wide range of topics dealing with technology in libraries. If you’d like to take part in the conference, all …
When 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. So I added content …
Google/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 well since …
I 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 had at …
Presenters: 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 …
This 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 want to congratulate Laura Crossett …
In 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 presentations that …
You’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 piece in response …