In many libraries, we see collections that do not meet the needs of their users. This problem can affect small rural public libraries with limited budgets and prestigious academic libraries that have comprehensive print and electronic holdings. It’s easy to understand the problem of limited funds, but if a library has an excellent collection why …
To continue my theme of practical user-centered applications of technology in libraries and education, I started thinking about podcasting. I don’t really know how it could be used in libraries. I don’t imagine patrons would want to listen to an audio listing of events or interesting items read by their librarians and I don’t know …
I’m going to be doing a presentation on information literacy in a few weeks, and I’m planning on looking at how new technologies can be used in information literacy instruction. I was thinking of looking at screencasting/flash tutorials (using camtasia, captivate, etc.), podcasting, wikis, blogging, rss, social bookmarking (del.icio.us, FURL, etc.), or anything else that …
I’ll admit that I was initially somewhat indifferent to podcasting. I’m not sure why… maybe I thought it was just a flash in the pan and would disappear as quickly as it appeared. Or because I’m not currently driving anywhere and I can’t listen to things and read/write at the same time. Well, I’m willing …
Just about every day, I learn about some other cool use for new technologies that makes my head spin. And I love it. 🙂 Alan Levine (of cogdogblog) has been interviewing librarians and other techies via skype for an article about recent trends in Internet audio. Here, he writes about what he used to do …
I think Podcasting is cool, but not for me. I’m a visual learner, so listening to my favorite bloggers takes more mental energy to absorb than reading their blog entries. In graduate school, I hated listening to real audio lectures from my professors unless they were accompanied by lecture notes, powerpoint, or something visual. That’s …
Blog people… Sounds like creatures from a cheesy sci-fi movie you’d see on MST3K. 😉 I know this has been talked to death, but as a dues-paying member of the ALA, I wanted to offer my two cents on Michael Gorman’s opinion piece in Library Journal. I thought about writing last night, but I thought …
This month’s big library RFID news came when the Berkeley Public Library announced that it was spending $650,000 to place RFID tags on 550,000 library items. This is a library that has already exceeded its budget and has borrowed $500,000 from the city for the project: The library has slashed its books and materials budget …
The WikiBibliography pulls together articles and commentary on Wikis from a variety of areas. Most of the citations have links to the actual article, so it’s a great resource for those of you who are interested in what Wikis have to offer. It’s a really comprehensive webpage, and very useful if you can ignore the …
Thanks to digitizationblog, I just found an amazingly cool blog that I wanted to share with you. Digitization 101 is a blog created by Jill Hurst-Wahl for Hurst Associates. Hurst-Wahl writes some fantastic posts on just about every aspect of digitization (from the practical to the existential), including such topics as “finding digitization vendors”, “Digital …
Thank you Librarian Avengers for spelling out what most of us say to ourselves day after day as we navigate library websites and library catalogs: most library websites suck. In one of the classes I took for the MLS, we had to critique library websites, and we certainly found no lack of terrible websites to …
If 2004 was the year of the blog, I think 2005 will be the year of the Wiki. Wikis first came to my attention in 2003 in the form of the Wikipedia, which I thought was a fascinating and fabulous idea. What I didn’t know at the time was that Wikis have been around since …
Right now, my hubby, Adam, and I live right near his parents and, like many people in our generation, Adam is their tech-support guy. Since we’re moving to Chicago in two weeks, we’ve both wondered how his parents would fare without his frequent support visits. When I saw a review of Surviving PC Disasters, Mishaps, …
So many great library related things to listen to online! Libraries of the Future From WBEZ (soon to be my public radio station — woo hoo!) a fabulous discussion about why people are still visiting libraries in the digital age and what innovative things libraries are doing to keep patrons coming back. [real audio] Greg …
TangognaT turned me on to Cheap Eats at the Semantic Web Café from Burningbird. It’s mega meta-post on folksonomies and the Semantic Web. Technorati tags, controlled vocabulary versus folksonomies, the spam and abuse factors, Clay Shirky, Rebecca Blood, Tim Bray, etc. Insanely comprehensive and quite thoughtful insights on the subject. If you’re going to read …
I’ve been reading a lot of great articles and posts about the viability of virtual reference and how we can make it better for our patrons. The Library Journal article, Virtual Reference: Alive and Well, by Brenda Bailey-Hainer, talks about how virtual reference services will only be cost effective when done as cooperative ventures between …
During one of my interviews this week, I asked the interviewers what some of their biggest challenges were at their library. One of the challenges they mentioned was keeping all the staff on the same page about policy changes and news when people worked varying shifts. This is a common issue in libraries. The fines …
In light of IBM’s offer to allow use of 500 of their software patents for open source applications, Sun is now freely offering 1600 of its own patents for open source development. This comes on the heels of their announcement that they are open sourcing Solaris’ source code through the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution …
David King at Dave’s blog asks some valid questions about Sirsi’s new RSS offering: But for me, there are some questions I’ll need to answer to become completely satisfied with the product. Mainly, because the way I’m reading SIRSI’s PDF, to use the RSS feed part, you have to purchase SIRSI Rooms (a separate product …
All of the photos I’ve taken with my regular camera over the past few years are sitting in a shoebox. They aren’t at all organized and, as a result, I rarely look at them. However, the digital photos my husband and I have taken are well-organized for easy browsing thanks to Picasa. I have been …