Archive for 'tech trends'

There 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 …

Today 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 …

After 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 …

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 …

When 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 …

I have to admit that the Annoyed Librarian is one of my guilty pleasures. I love to laugh and she makes me laugh like crazy, even though she’s probably insulted me on her blog in the past and I was too thick to notice. Reading something that is so diametrically opposed to most of what …

When I was asked to be one of the Top Tech Trend experts, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to attend the actual panel session this year, because I was slotted to be on another panel at the same time. I knew I’d at least post something to the LITA Blog, but I …

Last night, I got an e-mail asking if I’d like to join the LITA Top Technology Trends panel as one of their experts. And it didn’t take me more than 2 seconds to decide that I was going to say yes. Wow! What an honor to be included with such a distinguished group of professionals! …

Stephen Abram wrote a column for Information Outlook on Learning 2.0 called 15 Minutes a Day: A Personal Learning Management Strategy. So it got me thinking. If I had 15 minutes each day to keep up with technology and libraries’ use of technology, what would I do? Here’s what I would suggest… Keep up with …

My good friend, Roy Tennant, has just accepted a sweet job at OCLC, and he didn’t even have to leave Northern CA! I don’t quite understand exactly what he’ll be doing there, but I know that anything he works on is going to be great. OCLC has been making some good hires lately and I …

I got back home from Computers in Libraries yesterday afternoon. The sky was a beautiful blue (still is) and the weather finally convinced me that it might be possible to get my snow tires removed. What a nice change from the weather I’ve been experiencing in Arlington, VA and New York City over the past …

Meredith Farkas on Social Software Originally uploaded by madinkbeard. I did a lot of blogging at the last two major national conferences I attended. I decided this time, given that I’m giving so many talks, doing the book signing, etc., I would just kind of take things in without writing everything down. I’ll still write …

And what a season it’s going to be! Last year, I gave my first conference talk ever at Computers in Libraries. Since then, I’ve given around 18 talks and I have 10 talks scheduled between now and the end of June. Insane! And it all starts Friday! On Friday, I’ll be giving the keynote (another …

Nintendo Wii: Meredith’s Mii Originally uploaded by SirStan. I have a Mii! I have to say, I thought I could wait until the summer or next Fall to buy a Wii, but after playing it at a friend’s house last night, I’m really starting to get the itch! Adam bought me a Nintendo DS Lite …

I just wanted to take a moment out while slogging through my book galley (more on that at a later date) to congratulate my friend Casey Bisson on being awarded the Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration for his development of the WPopac, a groundbreaking catalog with WordPress as the front end. Casey deserves a ton …

While at Internet Librarian, I learned about the Maintain IT Project. This three-year Bill and Melinda Gates funded initiative is designed to identify best practices for maintaining public access computers. Right now, they are collecting stories from library folks about working with public access computers and keeping them running. From these stories of success and …

Can I just tell you how much I love Firefox 2? I’m usually the last person in the world to download an update, but I’d heard such good things about it that I threw caution to the wind. And the hype was definitely warranted. Some cool features include: Spell-checking in forms (it’s doing it right …

October Conference Wrap-up – Roy Tennant Roy discusses the salient points from each talk. Wikis: Creating Collaboration in Libraries Wikis are a low-threshold way to collaborate. Doesn’t need to be open to everyone to change. Search capability. Requires trust among a community (though it is easy to rollback changes). Many potential uses. Don’t even have …

Staying Informed by Bill Garrity, Dartmouth University “Being geeky doesn’t make us losers.” We all have personal requirements for how we get information. Bill doesn’t want to have to go somewhere to find info. He wants it pushed to it. He designs his browser environment to keep up. He has a tabbed browser and multiple …