Shoving and Making

It’s been an interesting couple of months. This is largely due to the fact that I recently attended the Northern Exposure to Leadership. I met some wonderful people doing incredible things. It was an absolutely amazing experience and one that I’m still trying to fully digest. I do hope to post something more on this experience, as soon as I figure out how to put the whole experience into words.

Library Journal recently announced this year’s Movers and Shakers. I’m not surprised to find that I know many of the names, both in real life and virtually, on the list. Congrats to you all!

Many of you may already know about the Library Society of the World’s new award, the Shovers and Makers. I think this is a great idea! While Library Journal recognizes some of the most outstanding work being done in our field, the Shover and Maker award celebrates the fact that many of us are doing great things too. All you have to do to claim a Shover and Maker award is post a profile celebrating the great things you are doing. I’ve done mine. Go! Do one for yourself! Celebrate all your hard work!

I will be attending Computers in Libraries this coming week. Hope to see some of you there!

A New Year

Happy New Year to all! A new year, time for new beginnings and all. Instead of resolutions (which I hardly ever keep, like 95% of resolution makers), I’ve decided to be a little more general. It’s a year of more and less. More of all sorts of good things (exercise, healthy eating, of course blogging, making some kind of difference be it volunteering, monetary, what have you, etc etc etc) and less of the bad stuff (reduce stress if that’s even possible, less crappy food, yadda yadda yadda). We’ll see if that’s too general to be effective but at least I might be able to feel I’ve done something. Good luck to you if you’ve done the resolution thing and hope to see you in this new year!

Technoblindness

I just came back from catching a presentation done by a multimedia class. I’m sorry I missed the beginning and the rest of the presentations as this was quite enlightening. In a project called Lifecasting, students filmed a number of reactions to situations. I was most enthralled by two scenarios which filmed people staging things left behind/being stolen and invasions of personal space in a public atmosphere. In the cases where people left items behind or staged a theft, the people around them were generally oblivious to the action happening. Why? Because they were on their cell phones or staring at their computers. The same occurred when people invaded personal space – computer screens seemed to act as a barrier to the actions and conversations around them. I find it fascinating that we’ve used social technology such as cell phones and computers and use them in such anti-social ways, blocking out the world outside our small personal world.

This has implications for work on a reference desk. I know I am tied to my computer and while I try to look up and keep an eye out for people needing assistance, I wonder how many I’ve missed because I’m using technology as a barrier. I will certainly try to be more aware of my surroundings while I’m using technology.

Me and my tag

After a discussion with a colleague, I decided to change my blog tag for fun. It’s been a couple of years on this blog so a change is well overdue. I’m thinking I should do this more often. If you’ve got suggestions (be nice please!), let me know.

In case you’re wondering, the new tag is in reference to my new dual-cord status. I shall always have power now!

The Culture of Now

Lately, I find that my level of concentration has not been up to its normal level. I think there are a lot of things that contribute to this – I spend too much time online (where I don’t read as deeply as I would with a book), too much time checking for new email and too much time with the tv on in the background. I’m sadly falling out of practice when it comes to deeper thinking and concentration and I hope to remedey this soon. I need to start unplugging more and sitting down and spending more than 10 minutes on one activity.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this relatively sudden lack of concentration. I love being online but I find that it is affecting the way I think. This turned my mind back to another topic that I often think about – history. My undergrad degree is in history and I continued my studies with classical history. I often find the historian in me emerging when I think about the Internet. Maybe it also has something to do with my work in government publications too. The Internet is changing the way history is written. We can not rely on the Internet to allow us to write history in the same way – we no longer have all of the documents that we once had. It’s far to easy to delete an email or an entire document. Webpages are constantly changed.

We have become a culture of now – we rely on tv, radio, the Internet for our information but there is little being done to preserve it. It is rare to go back and compare what was already shared, although there have certainly been more moves towards preservation through such things as Google Books and Internet Archive. I recently listened to a September podcast of CBC’s Spark (yes, I am behind on my podcast listening), which discussed the nature of the Culture of Now and the influence it has on us, including an interview with Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive, which I would recommend.

Libraries pride themselves on being guardians of our past – an important role. How do we compete with a culture of now? How do we make ourselves more relevant? Certainly we have a role in preservation but is there more we can be doing to help people see and understand in a culture of now? These are not new questions but they have been on my mind of late.

Blogs Abound

Yes, I read too many blogs (and often fall behind). I realize that I haven’t updated by blog roll since I started my blog, so I have added a link to my Google reader library list, in case you want to expand your own blogroll. Apologies if I’m not reading your blog … yet!

Warning Sounds for Librarians

First of all, apologies for the extended silence. Between IFLA, First Year Experience activities and a slew of beginning of term instruction, I have had little time to think let alone blog. Now that things are quieting down, I hope to be more on the ball.

I decided to title this post after an article I read on BBC News a while back, Warning Sounded on Web’s Future (speaking of which, I’m trying to read the Future of the Web and How to Stop It – may have more on it later). The line that caught my attention is in bold at the very beginning of the article “The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.” Sir Tim Berners-Lee is worried about disinformation on the web. This is where I hear trumpets – duh duh da na! Enter Librarians! This is us! We should be and are doing this! One of the main tenants of information literacy is the evaluation of information in any form. Many of us have been teaching this for years – the skills to evaluate and examine information. So why doesn’t Sit Tim Berners-Lee know this? Why doesn’t anyone seem to know this? How do we get out and teach everyone how to evaluate information? This is a fundamental problem for us. We’re great at what we do but no one knows. It’s partly a marketing issue. It’s partly an outreach issue. It’s also the fact that many people think they are doing alright on the info front and don’t attend a library session to improve their skills. I teach basic library searching skills and web evaluation classes. While I hope the students take something away from both sessions, I hear time and again from faculty that the students felt the web session was more valuable – they learned they didn’t know everything about the web and how to tell good from bad info and it speaks more to the way they tend to search. So how do we let people know that we can help them wade through information swamp that is the Internet? I’m certainly open to suggestions. Does your library offer web or info evaluation sessions?

On a complete aside, it’s conference time. I just helped plan and attended my first Access conference – a very good time and I highly recommend it. A very techy conference, which at times could be intimidating for a tech wannabe like me, but a lot of great content for those with less than stellar tech skills. Up next is Internet Librarian – maybe I’ll see you there!

Save the Environment

I still need to post about CiL – I promise, it’s coming. Until then, help save the environment, line your walls with books! Yes, an excuse to go by books (like you needed one) – lining your walls with books will help keeping hearing costs down. So, don’t wait, start buying!Save

Browsable Fiction

Another new site has popped up around here. We now have a site for our popular reading collection – a collection that’s been a huge hit so far! The site let’s you browse by cover, write reviews, share comments and recommend new purchases. Very cool – I’m busy spreading the word to students. Check this site out for more info.

Windsor Budget Woes

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.