After writing my last post, I started thinking that it really would be helpful to have a resource with information on self-promotion for new librarians. So I started one here on the Library Success Wiki. Stop by and add your knowledge to what could be a tremendous resource for new librarians. What do you wish …
I have been reading the discussions regarding “movers and shakers” and the “self-promoting elite” with great interest. See these posts (and many comments on the first two) at The Shifted Librarian, Walt at Random, Caveat Lector and The Liminal Librarian. I find it very interesting how a post about how libraries can keep the people …
If you haven’t taken a look at this terrific library marketing video from LIS students at the University of Pittsburgh, what are you waiting for? These students could teach experienced library marketing experts a thing or two about selling the library to young people.
I’ve been seeing and reading so much about gaming and its relevance to libraries that there is no way I could summarize it all on this blog (especially since a lot of the research has been done for my book and I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending 😉 ). But I would like to …
I don’t know what’s going on… but I like it. I know, I said a while back that 2005 was going to be the year of the wiki, but I really underestimated the time it takes for people to see the real practical benefits of a social tool. I think by the end of this …
I have been working since November to make HigherEd BlogCon a success. And whatdayaknow? I get the flu, just as the Library and Information Resources week begins. I have been feeling hella-bad since Monday and although I’m definitely a lot better, I’m still only at the level of having a really bad cold. So as …
I just wanted to let you all know that today is the first day of the Library and Information Resources track of HigherEd BlogCon. We’ve got a great schedule of presentations this week that cover a wide range of topics dealing with technology in libraries. If you’d like to take part in the conference, all …
Dorothea asks TechEssence readers what you’d like us all to write about. We’ve really got a really diverse range of tech expertise in this bunch, so take advantage of it! Let us know what tech topics you’d like to hear from us about.
There’s another new blog on the block this week! The Liminal Librarian is written by the inimitable and indomitable Rachel Singer Gordon, one of the best writers in the profession today. For those with limited vocabularies (like me! I didn’t have a clue.) liminality is the state of being “in between,” which pretty accurately describes …
I’m a nuts and bolts kinda gal. I like books, articles and conference sessions that give me real, concrete ideas for how I can do good things in my library. I think a lot of librarians are like that. We’re all busy people and many of us only have time for professional development outside of …
Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed for this free online conference about the use of social software and other Web tools in higher education. If you only want to see the library stuff, there’s an RSS feed for each separate track and here’s the feed for the Library and Information Resources Track. Remember …
When I first started Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki in July 2005, I didn’t know how people would respond to it. Would they use it? Would they ignore it? I figured that if the worst thing that would happen is that they would ignore it, then it was worth doing. So I added content …
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 something more scholarly and related to a specific subject, I will use subject databases, though I will usually try Academic Search Premiere as well since …
For one chapter in my book on social software in libraries, I’m discussing how librarians can determine which tools are the best for their library and population. To that end, I’ve been interviewing folks who work in all different kinds of libraries (and with different populations) to offer their two cents on which social software …
Jane Dysart writes a great post about the difficulties of scheduling and planning a conference in response to Walt Crawford’s criticism of CIL occurring at the same time as PLA. Hey, I surely don’t envy the job she has. I’m finding it stressful enough just to coordinate the people who are presenting for HigherEd BlogCon. …
I feel like I’ve been run over by a train. In addition to being completely exhausted by the conference and waking up with a migraine, I seem to have come down with a bad cold on top of it all. But I’ll take feeling like this any day for the amazing time I had at …
This session was PACKED! I came in with Dave King and we both had to sit on the floor. There aren’t too many folks I’d sit on the floor for, but Roy Tennant and Andrew Pace are definitely two of them. Roy and Andrew both took the word OPAC out of their presentaton, because it’s …
The Teaching Moment in Virtual Reference – Clara Hudson Clara Hudson is a librarian at the University of Scranton. When doing reference by phone e-mail and chat, we lose the visual cues we get at the reference desk. This is why communication skills are so important online and on the phone. On the positive side, …
How Basic is Basic? – Kathleen Stacy She is talking about one-shot reference sessions. It was nice to see her say that it’s better to have the students come to a one-shot reference session without much of a plan than for them not to be brought at all. I’ve heard some people say “I won’t …
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 was about how to educate librarians, but apparently, I was way off. Keeping Up To Date with Technology – Jeanne Holba Puacz Technology changes so …