PLA 2008, Day 3: It Ain’t Necessarily So: Challenging the Assumptions of Legacy Librarianship

Speakers: George Needham and Joan Frye Williams
Aside - if you’ve never heard them speak, you need to. They are great presenters, and have great things to say. The combination is awesome!
Aside - George pulled up iTunes before the presentation and is playing some cool blues as background music. What a cool way to add a [...]

PLA 2008, Day 2: The Cutting Edge: The Latest Information on Web 2.0

Michael Stephens, John Blyberg and Jen Maney
Jen’s title: Let’s Get Excited (and realistic) about Web 2.0
“not really a technological phenomenon at all; it’s a social one, enabled by technology.”
Can’t understand new tools in the abstract - you have to use them.
They have an emerging technologies team - they help evaluate services and new stuff
They think [...]

PLA 2008 Day 1: Dewey or Don’t We?

Maricopa County Library District Perry Branch dumped Dewey
Marshall Shore was one of the speakers (there were two others from his library as well)
Customers wanted a comfortable, browsable space - they thought of the concept of third space, and merchandising type stuff
signage - looked good 2 feet away, completely unreadable at 30 feet away
all the staff [...]

PLA 2008 Day 1: What Does it Take to be Good at Reference in the Age of Google?

Speaker: Joseph Janes
Title: What Does it Take to be Good at Reference in the Age of Google?
Aside - Sorta humorous - moderator asked us to turn off our cell phones… in THIS session about emerging trends in the age of google! Hee. Probably should have said “put cell phones on mute.”
“we can find things they [...]

New Digital Branch

Some of you might have noticed I’ve been dropping very vague hints on this blog about my library’s website redesign… well, no more vagueness! In fact - how about checking it out for yourselves? Go to webdev.tscpl.org and and see what my web team has been busy creating.
A few asides:

If something doesn’t work, most likely [...]

Has Elvis Left the Building?

Gee whiz. Every now and then, someone decides to share that some new-fangled “library 2.0″ project didn’t work out … and others start claiming “After John Blyberg and others come out and say that library 2.0 didn’t work and neither did tagging, etc., the flood gates open.” Huh?
It might be good to remember two things:

If [...]

The ReadWriteWeb needs Sexy Librarians

In December, the awesome blog ReadWriteWeb posted a couple of great articles about how librarians are needed (and even linked to Michael Porter’s flickr photo of Michael and yours truly battling it out on Guitar Hero). That’s all dandy!
But the ReadWriteWeb just posted Deconstructing Real Google Searches: Why Powerset Matters … I’d add “real BAD [...]

Pew Internet & American Life Project’s New Report on Public Libraries

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has a new report out: Information searches that solve problems: How people use the internet, libraries, and government agencies when they need help.
It’s an interesting read… and I’m not quite sure how to take it! So… here’s a list of what I saw as some highlights in the [...]

The Physical Library in the 21st Century?

From the comments on this post:
“… what happens to the physical library? If Topeka Public mails the holds to patrons and they can drop the returned item at boxes, and the patrons need not come to the physical library… I’m the systems librarian at the Academy Library Budapest and am alarmed by the declining [...]

You-promotion or Me-promotion?

Just saw this on Seth Godin’s blog today, and thought I’d pass it along. Go read it - but here’s the jist:

Seth writes about self-promotion
He explains that 37 Signals doesn’t do self-promotion, because they’re “promoting useful ideas. They’re promoting tactics or products that actually benefit the person they’re reaching out to.”

Then he sums it up [...]

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