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 …
So I did my wiki presentation and apparently I did not suck. 🙂 For those who attended the talk (or any other interested parties) you want to see the slides from the presentation visit http://meredith.wolfwater.com/cil06/. Thanks to Jessamyn for her slide template. For more information on wikis, you can visit this talk I gave on …
Participants: Amanda Etches-Johnson, Aaron Schmidt, and Michael Stephens Why are we spending so much money on commercial software when we could just put an IM name online for our patrons? There are 65 libraries currently providing IM on the Library Success Wiki. Michael Surveyed a bunch of librarians on IM 50.5% are allowed to use …
talk given by Tom Peters and Lori Bell of OPAL OPAL stands for Online Programming for All Libraries. Lori used to be the head of the Illinois Talking Book Center. Hard to get people with limited mobility together for a book discussion, so they were looking for a way to do this online. Tom Peters …
Note: I’m going to put my own editorializing in italics to keep it separate. Ok, so they said we wouldn’t be able to get a signal in the ballrooms, but low and behold I seem to be getting a good signal! Rock on! Update: Ok, nevermind. Once they closed the doors I lost it. Well, …
Tomorrow (very very early) morning Adam and I are hopping on a plane and heading to DC for Computers in Libraries. This is my first Computers in Libraries, so I’m really excited! It’s also my very first time doing any sort of speaking at a conference. I’m not too nervous, since if I can’t talk …
This has been a crazy few weeks. So many exciting things going on and so many people I want to congratulate. First, I want to congratulate Chris Deweese on the birth of his beautiful baby girl Tess Isabel. Something like that really puts everything else into perspective. YAY! Secondly, I want to congratulate Laura Crossett …
In just a couple of weeks, HigherEd BlogCon will be starting! It will be going on all month on the HigherEd BlogCon blog and through several Webcasts. I encourage all of you to visit the HigherEd BlogCon blog and to subscribe to our RSS feed so you won’t miss any of the terrific presentations that …
You’ve got to give the man credit. It can’t be easy to try to explain ALA. I’ve been embarassed to admit that I understand almost nothing about how ALA and the divisions, roundtables, offices, council, etc. fit together. When Michael Golrick said he was going to write some sort of ALA 101 piece in response …
ALA 2006 New Orleans Wiki I tried to get out… but they pulled me back in! No, actually I was thrilled to have been contacted by Mary Ghikas, the Senior Associate Executive Director at ALA, about the possibility of ALA creating an official ALA New Orleans Wiki. After discussing it for a while, we decided …
The NextGen Librarian’s Survival Guide by Rachel Singer Gordon If you’re a nextgen librarian, a new librarian, or someone who now or may one day be supervising nextgen librarians, you should run and order this book right now. I just got it in the mail last night and after looking at the Table of Contents, …
Other than perhaps being included in a blanket condemnation of “illiterate bloggers,” I never would have thought that I’d be so much as acknowledged by an incoming ALA President. Although she got my name wrong, it’s still nice to see that Leslie Burger is keeping up with the conversations in the blogosphere. And I really …
There was some sad ALA-related news this week. Karen Schneider, a passionate supporter of ALA, has had to quit ALA Council as a result of the funding cuts at her place of work, Librarians’ Internet Index. I’m sure this was a difficult decision for Karen, but a very understandable one in light of the fact …