This will actually be my very first trip to ALA Midwinter, and I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones. With my job covering the exhibit hall for American Libraries, I suspect that I’ll be spending more time at the exhibit hall than I’ve spent at the three Annuals I’ve been to …
As liaison to all of the distance learning programs at our University, I frequently deal with our Interlibrary Loan Librarian. We can’t do traditional book interlibrary loan with our distance learners because the loan times do not allow sufficient time for us to ship the materials to the student and for the student to consult …
Now it can be told! Rachel Singer Gordon’s been working on this terrific project: LISJobs Forums, a series of forums for librarians to share ideas and experiences related to career development. Here’s an excerpt from the press release on Rachel’s blog: LISjobs.com, the largest free library career portal on the Internet, is pleased to announce …
I hadn’t heard about before Stevie Kuenn sent this the info to me, so I thought some of you may not have either. The folks at YALSA are giving out 20 grants of $450 plus $50 in Teen Tech Week products for a library to celebrate Teen Tech Week: Have a great idea for Teen …
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 …
The Pew Internet and American Life project just released a report about how people access information to solve problems. While I’ve only had the chance to skim it so far, it’s definitely a report that will be of interest to those of us in libraries and related information professions. They asked 2,796 respondents if they’d …
Yes, it’s true… I am a woman. I’m also a librarian. In the world of librarianship, I don’t think about the fact that I’m a woman any more than I think about the fact that I’m Spanish-Ukrainian, Jewish, etc. I don’t feel like it should factor into my work or how people view my work. …
I just wanted to wish a very Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it. To those who don’t and are looking for entertainment on a day when it seems like everything is closed, here are two impossibly adorable and amusing videos I found on Cute Overload: Ok, I’m easily amused! Before Adam and …
I am so pleased that The Code4Lib Journal’s first issue is out. The projects described are really interesting and what I like most is that they include an explanation of how they did it (with code!). Far too often, you read articles about a library-related project that really don’t give you any idea how it …
For several years, I have used Feed2JS. It’s a great tool that makes it easy to display an RSS feed on any web page and to style the content to match the page. Many libraries are using Feed2JS on their own websites; some host it on their own server (that’s what I do), while others …
There are some libraries that most of us think must be the best places to work ever because of the innovation that goes on there. And in some cases, we may be right. But not always. I think we often assume that places that have good people are good places to work, and that doesn’t …
Starting in January, I’ll be teaching an online class on social software at San Jose State University. I am beyond excited about it! I’m really interested in having guest speakers in the class; people at libraries that are doing a lot with social software and can discuss the applications at their library as well as …
I’m reading a really interesting management book right now called First, Break All the Rules. I’m reading it rather slowly since I’m busy with putting together the material for the class I’m teaching in January for San Jose State, but I couldn’t wait to read it as soon as I’d heard about it (it’s not …
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on how I was probably not going to ALA Midwinter due to the high cost of travel to attend two meetings. Well, it looks like I will be going after all. I have been asked to cover the exhibit hall for American Libraries, taking over for Andrew …
Since I got to Norwich, my main priority has been to ensure that the distance learners have access to all the information they need to do research through the library. I have information all over the place about our resources and services. I’ve created screencast tutorials, HTML tutorials and FAQs. Some of the tutorials are …
A week from today, I’ll be taking part in a new project Tom Peters (of OPAL fame) has put together called Casual Conversations. From what he’s told me, it sounds like it will be a Charlie Rose-style interview (in a web conference format) where we chat about our work, stuff that we’re seeing in the …
I’ve been offline for a while, so I didn’t notice that UC Berkeley put the webcast of my keynote online! WOW! It’s available on YouTube, but you can also download the podcast from UC Berkeley’s site if you’re not into the whole video thing. I’m embedding the YouTube video here. I start talking about 12 …
I often have people asking me questions about mobile devices. They assume that because I’m tech-savvy about social software, I must also have one of those PDA Smart Phones and do lots of text messaging and whatnot. This could not be further from the truth. I’ve had the same junky, no-frills phone for over four …
I spent last weekend at the Massachusetts School Library Association Conference in Sturbridge, MA. I didn’t get to spend much time there because I had to be back at work on Monday, but I still ended up having a wonderful time. The night before my talks on Sunday, I had dinner with the wonderful group …
I think I just decided who to vote for (from VentureBeat): The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has given VentureBeat an exclusive look at his technology plan, which he plans to unveil officially tomorrow (Wednesday) before a visit to Google’s headquarters. The full plan can be seen below. It contains several new proposals, …