Posted inreference social software
Selling IM @ Your Library
Last year, I was very nervous about pushing the idea of IM Reference at my library. If anything, I totally over-prepared before even broaching the subject. I actually created a…
Posted ininstruction reference search
Do they care what they’re looking at?
About a week before I left for my vacation, Paul Pival, Ken Varnum and David Rothman had an interesting distributed discussion about how students are perceiving the research literature and…
Posted ininstruction reference
Zotero – is this what we’ve been waiting for?
I got my library a trial of RefWorks this summer (with the way our distance learners do school work -- often at home and work -- it makes much more…
Why Google (or Ask or Yahoo!) is good for reference work
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…
Posted inreference
CIL Day 2: Two Views on Educating Librarians
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…
Marketing @ my library: your input needed
OK, so I'm not a marketing expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I know that we need some serious marketing PR stuff to go on at my library.…
Tick marks or high tech?
I have a problem remembering to keep track of my reference transactions on the little clipboard we keep at the reference desk. My office is three floors above where the…
Posted inMPOW reference screencasting tech trends Wikis
Public speaking and wiki-evangelizing
I am not one of those people -- like Steven Cohen or Jessamyn -- who is very comfortable giving talks. No matter how well I know the material, I still…
Posted inlibraries reference tech trends
Chat interoperability
My new friend, and fellow Wesleyan alum, Stephen Francoeur, wrote: Wouldn't it be cool if your patrons could use an IM client to chat with your web contact center software…
Posted inreference tech trends
Jybe: Take Two
I still have not been able to install the Jybe extension in Firefox without my computer melting down, but I have been successful in getting it to work in IE…
Posted inour digital future reference
More from Google Maps
A few months ago, Google had purchased Keyhole, a program that allowed you to look at satellite photos of anywhere in the U.S. They allowed users to download it for…
Posted inlibraries our digital future reference
Screencasting? Finally something I can get behind!
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.…
Google Maps: Oh the possibilities!!!
When I wrote my first post on how excited I was about Google Maps, I had no earthly idea what the broad capabilities of the application were. I don't think…
Google Movies!
Yes, another new Google search tool (it seems like there's been a new one every day over the past few months!). Google Blog reports that Google has come out with…
Fabulous maps
Ever since I started this blog, I've made a big effort to post regularly. Unfortunately, I slacked off last week. Well, I don't know if packing, putting our junk into…
Posted inour digital future reference
What a wonderful Wiki world
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 cool yellow pages
If you haven't already, go check out A9.com, a yellow pages for the future. More a reference work than simply a "phone book", A9 allows users to not only search…
Giving the patron what s/he wants
Steph at TechnoBiblio wrote about an interesting observation at a recent panel discussion she attended: The final panelist came forth with a statement that seemed to take the audience by…
Posted inour digital future reference
The future of virtual reference services
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,…
Questioning information literacy
Here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that has been causing some controversy on the library-related listservs. Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions rails against the…
