Lilia Efimova, who herself has written some really fascinating studies of blogging, has collected papers from Computational Approaches to Analysing Weblogs and the 3rd Annual Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem. There are some really interesting studies in there, including Discovery of Blog Communities Based on Mutual Awareness and Browsing System for Weblog Articles based on …
On Friday, I had a meeting with the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies to discuss future plans for integrating information literacy instruction into the curriculum. On several occasions I brought up issues that involved communication problems between the programs and the library. In response, he discussed the internal communication problems he’s seen. He …
It’s funny for me to think back to one year ago when you couldn’t have paid me to speak at a conference. Between now and November, I’m going to be giving at least 8 talks (2 virtual). Even now that I feel better about speaking, the thought of giving so many talks makes me a …
I recently revamped the subject guide for our Information Assurance (basically Info Security) masters program. One thing I did was mix together several info security news feeds into one using RSS Mix and syndicated it on the Web page using Feed2JS (which we now have installed on our own server — makes it MUCH faster). …
When I graduated from FSU with my MLIS, I didn’t come out of it with job searching tips, an alumni network or really any help of any kind in finding a job. The College of Information, as it is now called, wasn’t great with the mentoring, networking, support stuff. So when I saw the Prospectus …
You know, I’m really going to end up running out of titles for my wiki posts, but that’s a good sign. It is so exciting and gratifying to me to see the number of people and organizations who have adopted wikis for personal and professional uses. I honestly don’t know of an easier or better …
I had a dream about Rachel Singer Gordon the other night… I told her I was done with my book and she shook her head and told me to keep editing. In spite of this dream and the nagging feeling that I missed 1,000 little things while editing the book, I printed it out and …
My book is due in just over a month. This is a fact that is causing me a fair amount of anxiety. I know I’ll get it done in time, but will it be good? I don’t know. Roy Tennant, trying to be nice and give me advice a while back, told me that I …
It’s been thrilling to see the growth of online educational opportunities for librarians. From OPAL, to SirsiDynix, to HigherEd BlogCon, to WebJunction, to podcasts, screencasts and countless blogs… there’s a lot of great free online educational content out there! Learning to be a tech-savvy, user-centered 21st century librarian doesn’t need to cost money or require …
I know everyone has already written about Internet Librarian, but I took two days off for my birthday, which I ended up spending getting mauled by lambs. Yes, you heard me. Vicious dress-eating lambs. Ok, maybe they weren’t vicious, but they did try to eat my dress! I also had the good fortune to bottle …
Since posting about social networking software almost 2 weeks ago, I have been corresponding with Oceana Wilson of the Crossett Library at Bennington College. They are the library that has been soliciting feedback from students on Facebook about what materials they’d like the library to order. Oceana and I are both curious about the policies …
Doug Geiger, a reader of Information Wants to be Free whom I’ve been IM-ing with since last year, IM-ed and asked if I would post this request my blog. While I don’t usually advertise things on here, I can’t imagine having to deal with medical expenses on top of the physical and psychological pain something …
We all have a story of our life in our heads that informs who we think we are and what we think we are capable of. This story is based on experiences in our lives — successes, failures, traumas, and other people’s expectations. Often we will construct our story based only on certain experiences in …
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 …
As I was working on the book and it started getting longer and longer… and longer, it became clear to me that I was going to have to cut some topics that I’d planned to cover. My book proposal included a few things that one may not define as social software but that I thought …
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 — …