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some library love links from astronauts and actors and poets and fans

jessamyn — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:02:43 +0000

Sometimes it’s a good thin to remember that libraries have big imacts on people who do big things. The ripple effect is hard to quantify, but it’s a good thing to remember. From my inbox

Ronald McNair was one of the astronuauts killed in the Challenger explosion 25 years ago. There was a piece on NPR about his brother reminiscing about how McNair was adamant about using his public library in South Carolina despite the fact that it was supposedly for “whites only”
Wil Wheaton, actor and blogger shared a short bit he wrote for a literacy project explaining why he thinks librarians are awesome.
In the comments of that post is a link to this poem published in Library Journal: Why I Am In Love With Librarians.
Another booster site that I forgot to mention earlier is the Library History Buff site. Larry Nix is a retired librarian and library history enthusiast. I’ve linked to his library history page many times over the years, but I’m not sure if I’ve linked to his blog. He recently did a post wrapping up the work he did in 2010 and pointing to the page he created for it. Good stuff, worth reading.

gaming for everyone

jessamyn — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:10:12 +0000

I have really been enjoying Library Journal’s column on games and gaming in their print magazine and should probably be adding Liz Danforth’s blog to my “to read” list. I enjoyed Allen McGinley’s post in 8bit Library talking about gaming for kids with special needs, with computer and non-computer games. Good list for a starting gaming program.

I made the cover of Library Journal for no reason whatsoever

jessamyn — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:46:03 +0000

Hiya. I’m preparing for a talk on Social Software that I’m giving in Utica, New York next Friday. I’ve been travelling significantly less and staying home writing much more. It’s been going well. I noticed last night on facebook [thanks Trevor] that I appear to be cartoonified and on the cover of this month’s Library Journal. Of course this is the post-Reed Business LJ, so I can’t find the cover on their new website and Trevor confirms there’s no actual mention of him or me in the actual article, but hey why pick nits? Interested folks can head over to his facebook profile and ID all the other luminaries on the cover including Emily Sheketoff, Nancy Pearl, Toni Morrison, Ginnie Cooper, Jill Nishi, Salman Rushdie, Mario Ascencio, Trevor Dawes, Camila Alire and Keith Michael Fiels floating away holding on to some balloons.

Library Journal on Libraries in Crisis

jessamyn — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:00:56 +0000

A friend who is working with the Save LAPL campaign has also been actively paying attention to all of the other libraries in crisis stories that Library Journal [itself newly for sale and purchased] has been writing. Here they are.

LIBRARIES IN CRISIS

Boston:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6719906.html
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6725545.html

Charlotte, NC:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6723200.html
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6724087.html
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6723882.html
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726630.html

Florida:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6723308.html

Houston:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726308.html

Indianapolis:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6725481.html

Lexington, KY:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6723655.html

Los Angeles:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6727913.html

Massachusetts:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6727650.html

Michigan:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6721718.html

New Mexico:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6720424.html

NYC:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726822.html
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726822.html

Ohio:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6725584.html
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6727977.html

Portland, ME:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6725481.html

San Francisco:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6722800.html

San Jose:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6722394.html

Tennessee:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6722036.html

on defaults, and design

jessamyn — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:32:48 +0000

Aaron Schmidt has a column in Library Journal about user experience. Here is his first column. The ideas of design and user experience seem sometimes orthogonal to what we do in libraries. We are concerned with content not containers, you know “judging a book by its cover” and all that. Aaron explains why design matters and how it pervades many aspects of what we do. Sarah got the best pullquote out of it already

Every time librarians create a bookmark, decide to house a collection in a new spot, or figure out how a new service might work, they’re making design decisions. This is what I like to call design by neglect or unintentional design. Whether library employees wear name tags is a design decision. The length of loan periods and whether or not you charge fines is a design decision. Anytime you choose how people will interact with your library, you’re making a design decision. All of these decisions add up to create an experience, good or bad, for your patrons.

This comes up in my technology-instruction world quite often. Many things about how a user interacts with a computer are pre-determined or at least have a default setting. So the talking paperclip? Someone made a choice that you would see that, instead of having it be a turn-onable option. The “your computer may be at risk!” messages? You can turn them off but the default is ON. These are all choices, actively or passively made. My feeling is that the more we explain to people that they can re-make some of these choices [get the talking dog away from the search box!] it empowers them to envision their computing experience the way they might want it to be, to know they have choices.

Library 2.0 and Jaron Lanier and You

jessamyn — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:35:37 +0000

I interviewed Jaron Lanier for Library Journal between Holidaytime and New Years. An excerpt of the interview is now in print and also available on Library Journal’s website: Jaron Lanier on the limits of Web 2.0, intellectual property, and libraries as a place of refuge. You can also read the unabridged interview with Jaron Lanier on my site.

To me there’s clearly something missing in the formula that we’re developing for civilization. There’s something missing and I think that the library will naturally come to fill that gap. And making the library into some sort of alternate facebook access point is exactly the wrong way to achieve that.

Give someone else a chance to move and shake….

jessamyn — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:42:44 +0000

Library Journal Mover and Shaker nominations are open until this Friday. I have to say that being in the first group of Movers and Shakers back in 2002 gave me a sort of boost of recognition in an otherwise large and sometimes overhwlming seeming profession. I try to nominate someone every year if I can and I’m set for this year. Have you nominated anyone? Go do it!

what’s going on with koha and liblime

jessamyn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:36:39 +0000

“Meanwhile, if there is high ground to be had, I doubt it is currently occupied by LibLime.”

Roy Tennant explains what’s been going on at LibLime and links to a longer post at Library Matters. LibLime’s version of this announcement, on their news feed, is not very encouraging. As someone working with a tiny library and a free version of Koha, I’m particularly disappointed in the libraries that are helping bankroll this and are not pushing for more openness in terms of release dates for code and better communication all around. Meanwhile Nicole Engard whose work I respect a lot has taken a job at Bywater Solutions. They are lucky to have her.

missing ALA this year

jessamyn — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:21:14 +0000

I sort of have a “How can I miss you if you won’t go away” feeling about ALA most years. I went when I was a councilor. I went when it was near me. I went when I was speaking at it. This time, none of these things were true and I was still a little exhausted from ALA Anaheim last year where my credit card number was skimmed and I had to drive an hour to get a decent restaurant. This year ALA is sounding fun, from the reports. ALA is always a better time when it’s in Chicago. More of the staffers can go and more people are used to the location and can get decent hotel rooms and the weather isn’t horrible. At least that’s been my experience. My work travel this month is going to consist of a trip to New Orleans next week [another popular ALA summer venue] for MetaFilter’s Tenth Anniversary where I will be paid to drink beer and eat alligator and wear a catchy t-shirt. Here are a few links I’ve been seeing about what I feel I’ve been missing at ALA.

Library Conference Secret Twitter Proves Librarians Sexy, Stern
Zines! Takes me back to my early days printing out Cognots at ALA in DC.
Watching the ALA2009 hashtag in real-ish time.
Meredith got an award!
ALA 2009 photo and tweet tracker (props to heather)
Library Journal’s up to the minute news tracker including their amusing top-of-the-tweets report

It’s just like being there, only I’m still in my pajamas, and I slept til 11.

can you loan out a kindle?

jessamyn — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:14:31 +0000

Library Journal announced last week that Brigham Young University had received a verbal okay from Amazon to start lending Kindles in their library. This week it appears that they’ve suspended the program until they can get written permission. While I totally understand the concerns on both sides here, I’d really like it if libraries sometimes erred on the side of continuing to do whatever it was that they were doing, in good faith, and let the vendors let them know if they’re not doing something correctly. It’s a little weird to me that Amazon has invested all this time and money into an ebook reader and has no policy about what the legal/copyright concerns are with using it in a library. Can someone please force this issue?

update: There is an interesting story making the blog rounds about just how much of the Kindle’s policies and DRM weirdnesses remain mysterious, even to the people who work at Amazon.

Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers

jessamyn — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:26:08 +0000

Library Journal has once again made the Movers and Shakers list look nice but not be super useful in the online world. I like seeing everyone’s photos. I’d prefer to get a copy/pasteable list of names. Here’s everyone [taken from the total list and grepped to only include this year's winners] and links to their LJ profile. If someone would like to add personal site URLs to this, please feel free to copy/paste/repurpose. Whoops, looks like Bobbi Newman had already done it, yay!

Maureen Ambrosino
Kenning Arlitsch
Barry Bailey
Brian Bannon
Rebecca M. Blakeley
Erik Boekesteijn
Chad Boeninger
Jill Bourne
J. Drusilla Carter
Natalie Caruso
Susan Conlon
Karen Coombs
Kim Duckett
Carlene Engstrom
Ann Dutton Ewbank
Lia Friedman
Dean Giustini
Toby Greenwalt
Jason Griffey
Carey Gross
Lisa Harris
William Harmer
Sarah Houghton-Jan
Ingrid Kalchthaler
Nancy J. Keane
Karen Kleckner Keefe
Casey Long
Laverne Mann
Daniel Marcou
Jamie Markus
Matt L. Moran
Joe Murphy
Rebecca Near
Kristi L. Palmer
Dave Pattern
Ken Pienkos
Michael Porter
Lauren Pressley
Lori Reed
Melissa L. Rethlefsen
Jenica P. Rogers-Urbanek
Lisa G. Rosenblum
Dorothea Salo
Allison Santos
Julie Scordato
Pam Sessoms
Koren Stembridge
Jaap Van De Geer
Geert Van Den Boogaard
Rachel Walden
Carlie Webber

Join the Shovers and Makers!

jessamyn — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:22:38 +0000

I added myself. Go add yourself. Read more, if you want, but it’s pretty self evident. [thanks dan]

Library Journal’s Star Libraries – show me the data

jessamyn — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:31:50 +0000

Library Journal has been making an effort to open up more, make more types of content available. I’ve been enjoying following Josh Hadro on Twitter. This was particularly useful when their Star Libraries report came out. Vermont has five libraries on the list [yay!] and I was trying to figure out how this compared to other states, by population and/or by sheer numbers. Josh went back and forth with me a few times pointing to other ways the data was displayed to see if any were helpful. What I was looking for was a list — similar to the Movers and Shakers list we were always agitating for — but I got close. The data is available, among other ways

In a graphic showing libraries by state with split-out charts at the bottom sorted by expenditure category.
As a Google spreadsheet with a separate page for each expenditire category
Listed by score within each expenditure category (note sexy sortable lists)

It’s hard to tell how all these pages are related to each other — this page is the best start page I found — and each page lets you comment which is also a little on the confusing side. I asked about where to find everything on one page and I guess you can’t do it. Library Journal staffers are hampered by a CMS that doesn’t really allow them to make decent links between things and whether it’s software or “wetware” the link they offered in a comment wasn’t even one I could click. So, yay hooray for the winning libraries and a “let’s do better next time” nudge for decent information design for this report next year.

dear annoyed…

jessamyn — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:41:08 +0000

Thanks Dan Chudnov, for saying what many of us have wanted to say.

linkdump for october ’08

jessamyn — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:12:56 +0000

Again, here are a set of things that maybe don’t need their own post but are worth letting people know about.

Literal videos? Have you seen these? They are remixed videos where instead of the lyrics, you see captions or hear lyrics that describe what is happening instead. Very amusing. The first one I saw was AHa’s “Take On Me” but now they’ve done the Tears for Fears “Head Over Heels” video which is one of the classic videos that takes place in a library. Enjoy. (and of course there’s this)
Sarah Houghton-Jan and Laura Crossett presented The Broke Library’s Guide to a Better Web Presence at IL2008.
Dan Chudnov has a great set of slides form a talk he gave at MLC about free software. Many slides, easy to understand.
Some discussion about Library Journal’s decision to bring eyeballs to their advertisers in the form of hosting the Annoyed Librarian’s blog. Free Range Librarian, David Lee King, Walt Crawford. My feeling is that I wasn’t payign that much attention to LJ anyhow and will probably continue to do so, though I really do like a lot of the people that work there.
LISJobs has a lovely redesign.
GODORT — the govdocs people — has a custom search engine that searches 611 government document sites simultaneously.

I’ll be doing another post on blogs added to my feed reader lately. I had organized and culled and plumped up my feed reading list a few months back [down time on an airplane] and was all pleased but then the hurricane that was my HD crash set me back to the beginning. I’ve been reading some neat stuff that I’ll be sharing with you.