I’m really looking forward to visiting Macalester, which is where I earned my undergraduate degree. Sad, though, that my most favorite professors have all already retired or moved on to other Universities.
Anyway, I will surely be posting more about the conference before, during and after the fact. Next Wednesday March 10, SLIS is hosting a dry-run of our workshop at noon in the U of I Main Library Computer Lab 3092, with cookies!
Clive Thompson from Wired Magazine — one of my favorite techno-journalists — writes that tools like Twitter can help us develop a “sixth sense” about the people in our networks. All those seemingly mundane facts like “having homemade bagel & lox for breakfast!” and “reading Vonnegut during flight delay…” can add up to give us a picture of what’s happening in the lives of those around us. As librarians, we can use Twitter to help our communities develop a sixth sense about who we are and what we offer, and we can also use it to develop our own sixth sense that will help us tune into the wants and needs of our communities, too. For instance, if you see a lot of chatter in your network about the recent PBS documentary Copyright Criminals, you can schedule a showing at your library and then send a tweet about the event to all your Twitter followers!
The Iowa City Public Library put on a fantastic Technology Petting Zoo today! ICPL’s Emerging Technology Committee offered an inservice session to expose library staff to new gadgets, including the Sony eReader, Overdrive eAudio, iTouch, the CanoScan Scanner, and eeePC. I presented on Flip Video, which I’ve used with ICPL teens in Teen Tech Zone to help them produce their own YouTube videos. You can check out my Flip Video presentation notes by clicking here, or you can click here to download the pdf.
So way back in 1997, Salon.com wrote up a neat feature called “Are We Ready for the Library of the Future?“, explaining that librarians have become “the general public’s last-resort providers of tech support.” Yet twelve years later, lots of librarians still don’t have a clue how to troubleshoot. Never fear librarians, Jessamyn West to the rescue! Here are some key pointers for the on-the-fly tech support librarian:
“He just keeps throwing data at you and it’s awesome!”
“He talks so fast and I love him!”
“Lee Rainie is my new boyfriend!”
Lee Rainie: Iowa Librarians have a crush on you. I hope you don’t think that’s weird.
In his talk “Close Encounters With Digital Citizens,” Rainie mostly threw a lot of data at us about how teenagers use the internet. He gave a similar talk in January, and those slides are available here (via slideshare):
Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, was the phenomenally brilliant opening speaker at the 2009 Iowa Library Association Annual Conference. With a conference theme like “Deciphering Our Future: Transforming Iowa Libraries,” Rainie’s talk about his research on American internet usage kicked everything off on just the right note. He gave the same talk in Wisconsin later that week, and those slides are available here (via slideshare):
It’s an absolutely free gift from MIT to the global community—or at least those who have access to the Internet: MIT’s visionary Open Course Ware (OCW) website offers free content from over 1900 MIT courses for the edification and education of humankind, including course descriptions, syllabi, calendars, reading lists, assignments, answer keys, study materials, exams, lecture notes, video lectures and “related resources” that the instructor hopes will supplement the course material. It’s a truly visionary resource that embraces the philosophy of open access. However, the content itself hasn’t been adapted for use outside the classroom, so it can be difficult for the casual online student to understand how best to interact with the materials.
Mark Helprin is such a nasty, mean windbag in his book Digital Barbarism. As a tattooed woman (2 strikes against me), I’m apparently just one of the millions of riffraff he loathes. However, although it KILLS me to admit it, he does raise a couple of interesting questions about Intellectual Property. So, 2 stars.
But ultimately Helprin is still wrong. The evil that he imagines himself to be fighting when he attacks Creative Commons is a cartoonish villain: a radical, frothing-at-the-mouth, fanatical, nihilist communist. Kind of a foil to Helprin himself, who fancies himself a hero: a rational, noble, courageous, moralist capitalist. The problem is that Helprin gets the Creative Commons movement all wrong.
This Friday I got to demonstrate some features of my Kindle 2.0 to a group of about 20 staff at my library. We’re getting ready to go the e-book route, which I think is very exciting. I feel so grateful that my library is willing to embrace and explore new technologies — we circulate video game systems, laptops, flip cameras, and our reference services entail chatting, texting, blogging and technology instruction. . .
Anyway, I’m getting distracted from what I REALLY wanted to tell you about, which is libraries and e-Books. It looks like my library is going to end up going with Sony e-Readers, because we already use the Overdrive service for audiobooks, and Overdrive just partnered up with Sony to offer content for their e-Readers earlier this summer. This makes me sad for entirely selfish reasons, because I use a Kindle — but that’s just the way it goes in the format wars. And it does really bug me that the Kindle is so proprietary and DRM-y — but all the better to hack, my dear! (And lest we forget — Sony is not exactly exempt from the evils of DRM, either. Remember that fiasco?)
Lori Bell, Director of Innovation at Alliance Library System in East Peoria, IL, came to this session to demonstrate her library’s amazing Second Life virtual library project, “Info Island Archipelago.” Second Life libraries are great meeting places for people who want to use avatars to meet from a distance. Virtual libraries don’t even have to look like buildings — they can look however we want them to look. They don’t have to be constrained by walls, and the weather can be perfect every day. And, just like the Info Island Archipelago, your reference librarian can be. . . Yoda.
Hi guys, I'm a public librarian in Iowa City, IA, who gets excited about social media, technology and civil liberties. By day I teach teens how to make multi-media projects and Facebook pages, and by night I fight for intellectual freedom in my Banana Suit! Well, just kidding about the Banana Suit. ...Or am I?
@angimur and I will talk about Second Life & Twitter in the U of I Main Library 3092 at noon. Dry run for #LibraryTech conference next week! 1 hour ago
Just found out that "LibTech" is a kind of snow board. Damn, guess I'll have to figure out a different hashtag. . . 1 hour ago
What I've learned from Tony Bechler's book: professors are like rappers. 15 hours ago
Btw that wasn't meant to be cryptic. Distress caused by banging head against wall, doing homework. 17 hours ago
Elevator music at Starbucks = strangely comforting. 17 hours ago
Rachel
