I’ve never been fortunate enough to hear Jessamyn West speak and based on Jenica’s notes from last week, I’m really missing out. Some of my favorite bits The digital divide is real, and our system for technology education scales very badly. There are economies of scale in most library work – processing 30 books does not take 30 times as long as processing one book – but teaching 30 people about the internet and computers takes 30 times longer than teaching one person. Libraries have become the social safety net for many Americans to learn what the tech-savvy think of as remedial technology skills, but the project doesn’t scale. “We are living in a future that they are not that interested in.” “Librarianship both is and is not sexy. Exploit that. Go be secretly awesome. Then tell someone.” These are some really good things to think about, but we’re supposed to do more than just think – “Go be secretly awesome. Then tell someone.” Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Share on FriendFeed Buzz it up Share on netvibes share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Buzz it up Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later
Training
Eternal September: Be Ready to Repeat Yourself. Again.
Last week I read this post on Seth Godin’s blog and loved it. I tweeted it hoping other people would pick it up. After reading Stephen Abrams post – What is Cloud Computing where he states I’ve given a few talks lately and I was surprised to get a few questions about “what is cloud computing?” I guess I really do live in the bubble. Then again I have had my share of what is YouTube? eBay? iTunes? questions lately too. I decided to devote a blog post to Eternal September, its the idea that every fall new freshmen show up and you need to teach them the ropes, rules, guidelines, etiquette all over again. New people show up on the internet everyday. People who don’t understand how blogs work or what Twitter is or why they would use an aggregator & RSS. It can be easy when talking amongst your cohorts to get caught in a bubble, when most of the people you interact with know what the cloud is and use Twitter everyday (or almost every day) you can forget that the majority of people don’t. If you’re like me, you like (or even love) the web and
What programming should a library science student learn?
I recieved this email from one of the students in the Collection Development class I taught at Mizzou and thought in addition to giving my answer I’d open it up for the hive mind. I had read somewhere, it might have been on your blog in fact, that it might be a good idea for library school graduates to learn some web design languages. I am thinking of picking up in my spare time (whats left of it) some web design language and I’m not sure what would be appropriate in the library setting. Which brings me to my question. Do you have any suggestions as to what technical languages or proficiencies would be good to pick up? I have thought about HTML, ColdFusion, ASP, and JSP, but beyond knowing a little bit of HTML/XML I am unsure what would be most useful. What do you think? What would you like to see on someones application if you were hiring? What advice can you give Chris? Some other blogs that have addressed this Why every Library Science student should learn programming Technology education and the “real world” Core skills: Curiosity technology advisory Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Share on FriendFeed
T is for Training
I am way overdue on this post. Several months back my friend Maurice recognized the absence of a specific forum for library staff to discuss and share information about training, so he created the T is for Training podcast. Every other Friday a group people get together (virtually) to share tips and tricks and discuss training related issues. If you’d like to call in or join the chat session you can find information here. If you’d like to listen to the podcast you can find it here. This week, among other things, we’ll be discussing Roy Tennant’s Top Ten Techie Traits post. Other Library related podcasts: Future Tense Library 2.0 Gang PALINET Podcasts Quirks and Quarks Tech Therapy Podcast Ted Talks Uncontrolled Vocabulary Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Share on FriendFeed Buzz it up Share on netvibes share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Buzz it up Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later Tell a friend
Workshop Wrap Up
On Friday I finished the last day of the four day Becoming 2.0 workshop. I’m not used to spending that much time talking to people, some days I don’t talk to anyone. So at the end I was pretty tired, but that’s passed and now I’m just excited. There were 17 “students” and everyone of them has at least one thing they were planning to start when they got back to their library and each one was different. The great part of Web2.0 (or the Social Web) is that you can take what works for you and your patrons, and they are doing just that. As part of the class we had them create blogs and I really hope they keep blogging so we can follow what they are doing. I have to say that this was a great group of people they were all willing to share tips and tricks and suggestions with us and each other. So thank you to all of them. I’d also like to say thank you to MOREnet who never fails to to be a wonderful host! They really go out of their way to make everything run smoothly! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post
Reading
