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Category Archives: library issues

Google Bingo

As part of my job this year, I have taken on the task of delivering six emerging tech sessions for library staff between October and March, one a month. The purpose of these sessions nominally to introduce the staff to interesting applications or uses of applications on the web, and then talk about them. I [...]

Libraries and Social Media

I’m all for social media, don’t get me wrong. Very much. I’m a big fan of and an advocate for things like Twitter and blogs and IM and all that. I follow social media I use social media, I recommend social media to others. However.
I don’t really understand the libraries and social media stuff. I [...]

Net Gen not so 2.0

More research supporting the end of the digital native mythology:

One Step at a Time: Taking the Library Website from reference source to communication tool

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? My head has been in a bit of a fog with it the last few months. The only thing on my horizon currently is my current task: rethinking, restructuring, and recreating the library’s website.
When I explain what the project is, it seems like such a [...]

Twitter and Libraries

In preparation for our new library website, I have been working on some social media policies. I’ve never really been much of a policy person before, but I recognize that because I am bringing in some standard social media tools, I’m going to have to define some best practices. I got my first blog in [...]

Digital Normals

This may be my favourite bit of research lately. Teens aren’t internet superusers: if anyone is, it looks like it’s adults.

Pull this out the next time someone regales with you more anecdotal evidence that the kids these days are “digital natives” and we cannot understand their ways.

The Death of Newspapers

My old friend Michael drew my attention to an article by Michael Nieslen about changes in publishing and how the paradigm shifts catch companies by surprise. In short:
Each industry has (or had) a standard organizational architecture. That organizational architecture is close to optimal, in the sense that small changes mostly make things worse, not better. [...]

Me in Six Panels

Next year I will be challenging library staff to use a comic strip application (bitstrips) to explain their who they are and what they do in the library to a student audience. It’s still months away, but here’s my shot at it:

Bitstrips Experiment: Email of Doom

Librarians and Elsevier

Not news: an Australian unit of Elsevier contracted with drugmakers to publish what appeared to be medical journals that didn’t disclose who had paid for them. In other words, Merck supposedly created a fake peer-reviewed journal to publish data that made its drugs look good. It also got Elsevier to publish the journal to make [...]