I was thrilled to hear last week about ACRL’s decision to start offering some free Webcasts for members. This is something that many people have suggested to ACRL in the past and I’m happy to see that the organization is starting to respond: Join us on Wednesday, April 2, from 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. …
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 …
Have you visited the LISjobs Forums lately? Well, now’s a good time to do it, as Rachel’s running a contest for those who post to one of the forum topics this month. Check it out! Get active on the forums during March, and win big! OK, “big” may be a relative term. But here’s the …
If you don’t already have survey fatigue, please consider helping out these librarians (and library school students) with their surveys: Survey about reference transactions [From Danielle Theiss-White] My colleagues and I are working on a book chapter about capturing reference transactions and could use your help. We have developed a survey asking how other libraries …
A Facebook friend messaged me yesterday with a library 2.0 assessment-related question that I didn’t have the answer to, but was curious about myself. So I thought I’d put it out to the hive mind: “[I was] wondering if you knew of any libraries who are doing a great job at assessing the impact or …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Since our Coordinator of Public Services left, I’ve been the liaison to the social sciences along with being the liaison to the School of Graduate Studies (whose programs are all online). That means that I’m basically the liaison to over 2/3 of the Norwich population, but it made good sense because of my strong background …
In the past two weeks, I’ve received around 10 emails asking for my advice on various topics. Sometimes these are questions that have easy answers. Some are asking for more involved advice that I’m happy to offer. Others are asking for things that would require an unreasonable amount of time and effort on my part. …
Word-of-mouth marketing is a very powerful thing. When you can generate buzz for your product among the people who are using it, what they say about it will probably do more good than any traditional marketing campaign. So, it stands to reason that when you have a new online product or service, bloggers can be …
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 …
Our classroom! Originally uploaded by librarianmer On Wednesday, the class I’m teaching for San Jose State University begins. It’s the first for-credit graduate-level course I’ve ever taught, so I’m really excited about it (and a little nervous). I spent the Fall developing the classroom and spent winter break finishing up the assignments and creating the …
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 …
I can’t wait to get my hands on this! Information Literacy Programs in the Digital Age: Educating College and University Students Online Edited by Alice Daugherty and Michael F. Russo, ACRL Information Literacy Programs in the Digital Age: Educating College and University Students Online describes significant and innovative online instruction programs in a straightforward, narrative …