Category: libraries

Twenty-three 2.0 tasks for librarians

Posted on by jessamyn

I saw it at Wired and the Chronicle of Higher Education. I read about it on Everything is Miscellaneous. They’re talking about 23 Learning 2.0 Things, a little blog post with a big impact.

The idea is simple and easily explained: “23 Things (or small exercises) that you can do on the web to explore and expand your knowledge of the Internet and Web 2.0.” Helene Blowers is a librarian, or rather the Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. The project as outlined is a two month project, so you have about eight weeks to learn about two things a week. Best of all, it’s all available on the web, via an easy to read and understand hyperlinked blog, so you can try it out at your organization. Christine MacKensie, the director of the Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne, Australia (who did a four month version of the program) makes a great point in the Wired Article “The last thing we want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look…. And they certainly won’t now.”

Enjoyment in Libraries – Art & 2.0 Tech

Posted on by jessamyn

Sometimes when I’m talking about 2.0-ish stuff, it can be hard to think of immediate examples of how libraries have always been doing a lot of this stuff, we just now have the tools to make it easier. A case in point is an email I received this morning from the Finkelstein Memorial Library. They have an exhibit at their library of drawings from David Friedman, a Holocaust survivor, who found peace and quiet in libraries upon his arrival in the US. He made a series of sketches of people enjoying the library that are available online as a slide show. While the library didn’t use Flickr for this particular web page, they could have, and they could have done so without much technical knowledge whatsoever.

While working on this series, it was his trips to the library that offered him the necessary respite from the torment and agony of his memories. The artist said, “I needed to forget about the concentration camps and the horror that was there. So it was a pleasure to go to the library.” The artist’s wife, Hildegard, and his daughter, Miriam Friedman Morris, have donated Mr. Friedman’s drawings of libraries in St. Louis, Missouri during the period 1962-1972 to the Finkelstein Memorial Library in Spring Valley, New York. We have digitalized the images and it is our great pleasure to share them with you online.

happy lovers day, LIBRARY lovers day

Posted on by jessamyn

The Australia Library and Information Association and Public Libraries Australia are rebranding Valentine’s day.

Forget Valentines’ Day, 14 February has been re-named “library lovers’ day”! Take the opportunity to celebrate those who love and support us and to remind decision makers how “loved” we are.

And in other 14feb news, I made this:

Happy Valentine's Day

what makes a good library great?

Posted on by jessamyn

T. Scott discusses the work of Jim Collins and how what makes a business great and what makes a social sector enterprise great are two very different things.

[I]n the social sectors it is a mistake to think that we need to “act like a business” (the subtitle to the monograph is why business thinking is not the answer) and he acknowledges that the measurements that we use to assess ourselves are not going to be as neatly quantitative as those that measure the performance of a for-profit company. But we still have to have clear goals, and strong discipline, and a way to tell whether or not we are moving toward those goals.