You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
The city of Windsor is trying to force the library board to cut $800 000, 10% of its budget, without closing branches or reducing hours. The library board is refusing to make the cuts themselves. More information on this fight can be found here.
Just heard about this huge project, which is undertaking to document all species of life on Earth. Pretty cool idea. The first release of about 30 000 entries was just released. You can check it out here or read more about it here. It officially launches tomorrow and hopes to document all 1.8 million species of life, with it’s ultimate goal being to help in conservation efforts.
In honour of the start of Freedom to Read week here, I thought I’d post this link. If you just followed it, you’ll know that it is a pic of the Parthenon, or at least a replica, made of banned books. Very cool way to combine two of my favorite things - books and antiquity. The best part - when it was taken down, the public was allowed to keep the books! It’s been out for a while but I felt it was good to share again.
I’m not sure how this one snuck by me, but it seems our catalogue now offers RSS feeds for saved searches! No more checking to see if anything is new, I can save the search and if any new material comes in that matches that search, I’ll get the results via RSS feed. Cool! More about this new feature here.
A fine idea (sorry for the pun)! Instead of paying for your fines, students are given the option to bring in canned goods. Every canned good brought in removes $2 from their fines to a maximum of $20. The canned goods go to the student food bank centre, where students in need can go and get help when they need it most. The only thing I might do would be to increase the frequency of this project and extend it out to local food banks too (1 time campus, next time local, etc). More info on this program here. Wonder if we could get this started here?
The Horizon 2008 report is out. I haven’t taken a good read through yet, just wanted to get the heads-up out there. I will certainly have more to say once I’m finished with it. A quick glance seems to note that some of the predications from last year have fallen off, in particular virtual worlds. I’ll post on this soon, so stay posted!
I’ve just returned from presenting and attending the Ontario Library Association’s SuperConference (despite a wicked snowstorm on Friday). As per usual, there were too many sessions and not enough time and I had some great conversations and attended some good sessions. Below is a brief roundup and highlight reel.
Coming Up to their Level - Sophia Apostol
This session looked at using technologies/terms that students are familiar with to introduce library instruction. A great example is making parallels between searching iTunes for a particular song to searching for a journal in an article database. I think using such examples makes tons of sense. It helps students realize that the library isn’t as foreign as they might think and puts them at ease by talking about the familiar first. Another good example is talking about tagging in Facebook and then introducing the idea of keywords or subjects.
What to do now and why? - Joseph Janes
A great speaker and thoroughly enjoyable session. A lot of what he spoke of made sense and wasn’t too shocking. He began by showing a picture of a reference desk and asking if it looked familiar - it was a photo taken in 1910. In many instances, little has changed. The fact that we could picture ourselves at this desk should be unsettling (and it was). We need to evolve. We need to do what we’re good at but do it better. It is key to become central to people’s information lives, ignorance, be relevant to what they do, be both physical and virtual. The virtual aspect needs particular investment since there isn’t the same level of committment as there is when one walks in a building, it is too easy to leave a website.
He didn’t seem to be a fan of Second Life (he’s not alone in that it seems) but he did make some interesting comments. He stressed that the process of SL (creating, building, interacting, etc) is more important than the product. I think this is true - something will replace SL but it is the ability to create a virtual world that’s important. He found importance in providing for the information needs for people’s multiple lives. He also noted that Second Life is about creation and noted that, for libraries, it’s really not about existing services. The question he raised was how can libraries be part of this creation process - what is our role in this? I’m not sure what the answer is at this point but I think it’s a question I will be pondering more in the next while, especially as I am reviewing our pilot service in Second Life.
Carole Honore, the author of In Praise of Slow, gave a plenary session. I started reading his book (which I read too slow and had to return to the library) and I am a firm believer that we do all need to slow down, take a step back. I must admit, I do find it hard to put to practice but it’s a good New Year’s resolution for us all (and not the resolutions we find so easy to break)
The Kids are Alright - Or Are They? - Jenn Horwath and Cynthia Williams
This session looked at some of the major works on today’s students (ie. Prensky). The literature seems to suggests students are tech savvy and up on all the web 2.0 applications, despite a lack of data to back up these claims. A look at the data suggests that students aren’t as savvy as we may have thought and this has implications for the types of services we’re starting to create. I can’t say I was terribly surprised by the data they pulled. I’ve asked students at the research help desk if they’re familiar with some of the more popular web 2.0 applications and the answer is no. As in my previous post, it may be that it is our role to highlight the useful applications.
I would have liked to have heard Andrew Keen speak, but it was scheduled during the time I was to present on Second Life, so here’s a great post on his session if you’re interested. My talk seemed to go well, so thanks to my co-presenter Donna and all who attended!
