Chris Anderson’s article in Wired discusses why free is the future for businesses. Guess who already gives stuff away for free? (Via several sources including Librarian In Black). He doesn’t write directly about libraries, but it’s worth a read for anyone who wants an insight into (one view of) a new economy.
Sarah Houghton-Jan posts an image showing 50 (bad) reasons not to change. Worth checking out to see how many of these you use. Although I can’t help feeling that some of them could be good reasons not to change. If you really don’t have enough money to introduce a new project, then that sounds legitimate to me. I guess it’s the difference between giving a reason and an excuse not to change.
Timothy shares his library orientation presentation, made on Google Docs with images from Flickr.
Meredith asks if any libraries are assessing their use of social technologies.
Annoyed Librarian on deprofessionalisation: “Many librarians want to turn libraries into community centers, but there’s one interesting thing about community centers that a lot of excitable librarians haven’t noticed. Community centers don’t need librarians. They don’t need people with “advanced” degrees in libraries or information or whatnot. They just need people to staff the cafes and plan stuff.”
Micheal Lorenzen on teaching with Wikipedia.
Jessica Hupp lists 25 useful social networking sites for librarians.
Lee LeBlanc on online vs offline education: “What I’m tired of is hearing outdated opinions about how horrible all online education is. That’s just not true.”
I’ve taken a couple of online courses, and I have to say I found them hard - I sometimes had problems hearing the lecturer or my classmates; we often spent time dealing with the technology instead of communicating; and the lack of visual cues made class discussion harder (face to face, you can see if someone wants to talk, and speak up if no-one does. Online we often sat politely in silence wondering if someone was going to speak). And yet: I enjoyed both courses more than most others I’ve taken, and I got my best grades in these courses. A product of the content/the lecturer? I don’t know. I still feel as though the online courses weren’t as good as the face-to-face, but my performance suggests that they may have been.
Facebook past its peak? Techdirt reports that Bill Gates has deleted his profile, and points out that Facebook has followed a typical pattern for social networks - “a huge rush of growth…..a flat period where people… begin to question why [they are using it]…. Then people realize that…. there really isn’t that much to do there”. And via LibraryStuff, court cases where posts on social networks have been introduced as evidence.
Jenny Levine reports on some successful games nights in academic libraries - this time meaning geocaching and board games, not computer games.
Teaching information literacy through fantasy football.
A good future for librarians? So say Business Week and US News (via What I Learned Today and the Annoyed Librarian respectively; one of whom is more enthusiastic than the other - can you guess which is which?)
Michael Casey describes instances where professional/managerial/backroom staff have denigrated front-line staff, and says that we all share responsibility for this, if we don’t speak out against it. I’ve only worked in one big library (I’ve been sole-charge, or nearly, otherwise), so my experience is limited, but I have to say I haven’t seen any examples of this behaviour. I applaud Michael’s comments, anyway.
Using Greasemonky to put an “email us” form on the ‘no results’ page of a catalogue (The Shifted Librarian).
Annoyed Librarian takes on the hideous term ‘guybrarian‘. Just so you know; anyone who refers to me like that is no longer my friend 
Noise zones at the library - a clever way of keeping all users happy (TameTheWeb).
Sexy librarians of the future will help you upload your videos to YouTube (ReadWriteWeb). A funny title, but a vital read. Absolutely nails what we could be doing in the future. (via LibraryStuff).
Cites and Insights 8(1) (PDF) is out now. Key article for me “A Time of Limits?”, which asks if we are spending money that isn’t really disposable. More importantly, it also points out that services which are sometimes treated as ubiquitous are actually only used by~10% of the population (like Netflix). Does that mean libraries can’t learn from Netflix, et al? Surely not (and Walt isn’t saying that). But it does mean that we don’t necessarily have to copy what those companies do, in order to be successful.
Pew have published a survey of library/internet use in the US. Some responses: Sarah Houghton-Jan has a good summary. Dorothea Salo isn’t happy at Pew “courting” bibliobloggers behind the scenes. (A number of bloggers who commented on the survey noted that Pew had contacted them to promote it; some others (who surely were contacted) didn’t - but then, they would probably have written about it anyway…No-one contacted me, I’m writing this because I think it’s interesting).
The paradox of choice - do too many opinions make it harder to choose? (Techdirt; asks if online reviews and user ratings really help us make decisions).
Blogs vs New York Times? Winner = neither! (Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing). “Five years ago, Dave Winer made a “long bet” with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.” Blogs are (just) winning - but Wikipedia is “clobbering” both of them. Cory concludes “whenever someone asks you which of two futures you think is more likely, your best bet is always “none of the above.”"
Another link dump with the odd comment.
First Monday reports a survey by Brent Bumgarner at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stating that students use Facebook: “as a social activity…. primarily as a tool for the facilitation of gossip”. Although ‘friend functions’ was the most highly-ranked reason for using FB, ‘practical information’ was seen as moderately important, implying that there might be a role for library information in FB, at least for some students. (Practical information was rated as more important than groups or events, interestingly).
Meredith Farkas reflects on how much help is enough (to offer to students, specifically distance learners). She says
“I’m never going to stop trying to make things better, but with some people you have to put up you hands and say “I’ve done enough.” If you’re not willing to look at tutorials, read documentation or contact us, I can’t help you. The student has to take some responsibility for this failure.”
These are interesting comments. I’m struggling with similar issues (having come from a special library where we did absolutely everything possible to support our colleagues). How much should we do to help students? Isn’t part of being at university learning how to do research for yourself? Isn’t there some sort of responsibility to RTFM?
David Isaacson discusses what’s still wrong with reference (Library Journal) and argues that reference librarians should leave basic questions to support staff and instead proactively approach users, with a focus on “[answering] more complicated reference or research question[s] or teach[ing]. This could be done… face to face by appointment, via chat reference or email, or simply by being available, as other teachers are, for drop-in consultations during scheduled office hours.”
Via LibraryStuff, MIT have launched an audio/video search engine for lectures.
Nicole at What I Learned Today has a post on the Kindle, and another on e-books, quoting Roy Tennant “e-books are better for research and quick reference, print books better for cover-to-cover reading,” and “e-books are easier to search,” while “print books are easier to read”. Yes, yes. It’s not an either/or situation - it’s print, or electronic, or both, depending on user need.
Via librarian.net, a funny comparison of Amazon’s shifting statements about books and reading.
Jon Udell: “In an online world of small pieces loosely joined, librarians are among the most well qualified and highly motivated joiners of those pieces. Library patrons, meanwhile, are in transition. Once mainly consumers of information, they are now, on the two-way web, becoming producers too. Can libraries function not only as centers of consumption, but also as centers of production?” (via TameTheWeb).
Judith Siess: faculty members want online, not print - and overwhelmingly so. (Worth noting though that the original source is Ebrary, a company that provides electronic content to libraries. Which of course doesn’t mean that the claim is wrong, just that the source has a vested interest in it being right).
Jessamyn West: presentation at Michigan Library Association: What Works: More My Library, less My Space (unless My Space works for you). Which seems sensible. And wins huge points from me for including a picture of the O RLY? owl on page 4 of the presentation, an image that is pretty much burned into my retinas since someone started posting it dozens of times a day on a forum I moderate. But I digress. Go read.