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« Previous EntriesComputers in Libraries (CIL2008) - My Brain is Full
Thursday, April 10th, 2008the group - for Connie
Originally uploaded by cindiann
I had a really wonderful time at Computers in Libraries, as always. While there are always certain talks where the delivery is disappointing or where you don’t learn anything, I went to a lot of talks that were […]
Computers in Libraries: In the Beginning
Monday, April 7th, 2008This week, I’m at Computers in Libraries, one of my very favorite conferences. This year’s schedule seems to be even better than usual an I found myself torn between two (and sometimes three or four) talks during most time slots. Kudos to Jane Dysart and the organizing committee! I was also thrilled to see that […]
Cloudbook: The Update
Monday, March 24th, 2008For the past few weeks, the Cloudbook has been a real disappointment, and it’s not like I was asking for much. All I wanted was to be able to access the Web and to use a word processing program. I got 50% of that. I was never able to really connect to wireless in a […]
Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
Sunday, March 9th, 2008First Monday has a great issue covering Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. The articles look at Web 2.0 phenomena (user-generated content, interactivity, social networking, etc.) from a socio-political-economic perspective and bring up some interesting paradoxes inherent in the movement. So far I’ve read “Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0″ and “Loser Generated Content: […]
Building 21st century librarians AND libraries
Sunday, March 9th, 2008There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo’s post about how many librarians outside of Systems see learning about (or doing anything with) technology as being something outside of their sphere of responsibility. The second […]
The CloudBook has landed!
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008Today my CloudBook ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) arrived. It just came out on Friday and is only being sold by one company thus far. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people to pre-order it and, as a result, I’m one of the few people who have it today. Kudos to ZaReason for […]
Tech-NO-lust
Monday, February 18th, 2008After reading Rochelle Hartman, Steve Lawson, Jenna Freedman, Dorothea Salo and Laura Crossett’s posts about their “Tech-Nots”, I started thinking about what it means to be tech-savvy. I was once I was eating lunch with some people I just met at a conference and one said “well you must have the new iPhone right?” Even […]
Maintain IT Cookbooks
Sunday, February 17th, 2008Over a year ago I wrote about a project called MaintainIT, a three-year Bill and Melinda Gates funded initiative designed to identify best practices for maintaining public access computers. Well, since then, they’ve been awfully busy. In addition to going around the country talking to librarians who maintain computers, they’ve published two cookbooks, which are […]
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, […]
Some great Library Technology Reports
Friday, January 25th, 2008As I’ve been spending more time than I would like in waiting rooms over the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to catch up on some reading; namely Library Technology Reports.
Michelle Boule wrote a terrific LTR called Changing the Way We Work, in which she covers tools for online collaboration. Michelle is really […]
The essence of Library 2.0?
Thursday, January 24th, 2008I found John Blyberg’s post, Library 2.0 Debased, very interesting and in many ways, a breath of fresh air. I agree with him on a lot of levels. I agree that mistakes have been made. I think there has been a lot of confusing rhetoric about Library 2.0. I think a lot of people lost […]
YALSA Teen Tech Week Mini Grants
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008I hadn’t heard about before Stevie Kuenn sent this the info to me, so I thought some of you may not have either. The folks at YALSA are giving out 20 grants of $450 plus $50 in Teen Tech Week products for a library to celebrate Teen Tech Week:
Have a great idea for Teen Tech […]
Saying goodbye to 2007
Monday, December 31st, 2007When I look back to the beginning of 2007, I’m really surprised at how much has happened in just one year. At the end of December last year, we were just contacting the students we’d accepted into the Five Weeks to a Social Library course. I don’t think any of us knew how incredibly successful […]
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 […]
Going to Midwinter after all
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on how I was probably not going to ALA Midwinter due to the high cost of travel to attend two meetings. Well, it looks like I will be going after all. I have been asked to cover the exhibit hall for American Libraries, taking over for Andrew […]
Building Academic Library 2.0 video
Monday, November 26th, 2007I’ve been offline for a while, so I didn’t notice that UC Berkeley put the webcast of my keynote online! WOW! It’s available on YouTube, but you can also download the podcast from UC Berkeley’s site if you’re not into the whole video thing. I’m embedding the YouTube video here. I start talking about 12 […]
CTO of America
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007I think I just decided who to vote for (from VentureBeat):
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has given VentureBeat an exclusive look at his technology plan, which he plans to unveil officially tomorrow (Wednesday) before a visit to Google’s headquarters.
The full plan can be seen below. It contains several new proposals, including the […]
Library Software Manifesto
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007Roy Tennant has posted a Library Software Manifesto which was adapted from a talk he recently gave. It outlines the rights and responsibilities customers have in the relationship between libraries and vendors and libraries and patrons. This and John Blyberg’s ILS Customer Bill of Rights are two important documents that outline what we all should […]
Alternative ways to participate (or why I probably won’t be at Midwinter)
Monday, November 12th, 2007I’ve written some posts critical of ALA in the past and have had a number of people encourage me to get involved so that I can try to make a constructive difference (instead of just complaining). So, when I was asked to be on two committees whose missions I felt strongly allied with, I said […]
Pennvibes
Friday, November 9th, 2007The University of Pennsylvania sure has some pretty impressive library tech folks! First they create PennTags, now they’re working on Pennvibes, which, according to this abstract from the DLF conference, looks like an exciting new way to create resource guides:
Pennvibes is a framework for content delivery and organization inspired by Netvibes, iGoogle, and Pageflakes. It […]
