I just love that feeling of serendipity when I find that people are thinking about the same things I am at the same time. Karin Dalziel made an impassioned case for every librarian to learn how to program. Dorothea Salo responded to it and described how she thinks technology should be taught in library school. …
I know people have been bemoaning the death of blogging in recent months. I certainly haven’t helped any with my lack of posting, but it’s certainly not from a lack of inspiration nor from my immersion with microblogging (which I’ve never quite managed to get into on a regular basis). I actually have lots of …
The Maintain IT project is awesome, so when equally awesome Stephanie Gerding asked me to pass on info about their new offerings, I didn’t hesitate: The MaintainIT Project is pleased to announce the latest Cookbook! “Planning for Success, a guide for the overworked librarian” http://www.maintainitproject.org/cookbooks/planning-for-success This free online resource brings together the most current ideas …
With the pregnancy, I tried to keep my speaking schedule light for Fall. However, all three of the talks I’m giving fall within a two-week period, so it’s made me a bit harried in October. Last Tuesday, I gave a webinar for METRO NYC which was very fun, but it’s always weird to give a …
In October, I’m speaking at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland entitled The Future is here: Are we prepared? New thinking in education for public librarians. (PDF). My talk is entitled “Librarian 2.0: The Future of Library Education and the 2.0 Organization.” I want to look at the skills/competencies librarians need in a 2.0 world and …
The part of my still new-ish job that causes my the most worry is assessment. I’d hoped to have time this summer to do some serious research on information literacy assessment and get some good ideas for how to best assess library instruction this Fall. However, I got too busy with other, more pressing, tasks …
Run, don’t walk to check out the Darien Public Library’s awesome new Drupal-based website along with the John Blyberg-designed new-and-improved SOPAC 2.0. I, for one, am totally impressed with the site and the catalog. One of the biggest things about SOPAC 2.0 (short for Social OPAC) is that its component parts are going to be …
Walt Crawford started his work on the PALINET Leadership Network site less than a year ago, but already, he has made it a terrific resource for people in our profession. Some of the articles on the wiki are original, while others are compilations of writings on a theme by a variety of innovators and leaders …
Last week was one of the most stressful, but also most satisfying, weeks I’ve had at work. That week, we did our “rook tours” which are orientations to the library for the new Freshmen entering the Corps of Cadets (our school’s population is around 50% ROTC). For three days a week before classes start, we …
Seriously, I just don’t get it. So, Google used to have a blog just for librarians called Librarian Central. I remember hearing about it from lots of folks way back when, but I didn’t read it because I figured if Google came out with something cool, I’d hear about it from someone’s blog. Apparently, the …
There is a very small, select list of people who I really see as role models in this profession. One of them is Mary Chimato, Head of Access Services at North Carolina State University. Her generosity, her strength, her humility, her sense of humor, her unwillingness to be steamrolled by anyone, her focus on being …
I need to ask a favor of you, my kind and generous readers. I recently offered to redesign the website for the Brown Public Library in Northfield, VT, which is definitely due for an extreme makeover. Since one of the most important requirements is that it is easy for someone who knows no HTML to …
While I was working on compiling all of the survey data from our graduate students, I had what I thought was a crazy idea. The idea came from a common suggestion and complaint from the military history grad students in the surveys. The suggestion was that we provide more eBooks in their subject area. The …
Over 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 …
I 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, …
As 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 …
I 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 …
Andrea Mercado and Kate Sheehan have both written insightful posts about the importance of librarians being aware of the culture of the social technologies they’re getting involved in for outreach purposes. From Kate: It’s easy to become enamored of social networking sites and Web 2.0 toys to the point where they seem like a panacea …
Sometimes we start a project or create a new service and it’s an instant success. Other times, we try something and it becomes obvious that it’s not meeting patron needs. Too often though, a project is neither an obvious success or failure. Even with statistics, it can be difficult to know what constitutes success and …
Library 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 website, so they are live! I ended up …