Please check out the ALA Annual Wiki that Meredith has set up if you’re planning on attending the conference in Chicago in June. This is a great idea. There is already a lot of good information there, and if you know anything, feel free to add it. The more I get used to wikis through my work with Wikipedia and my own experiments [yes I had a wiki, no I don’t anymore, yes I will have one again] the more I get excited about the potential benefits of providing simple easy-to-learn ways for people to collaborate online.
Category: ‘puters
Koha support from the folks at LibLime
Are you open-source-curious but reluctant to move to a product without built in support? The folks at LibLime want to help make the move to open source library systems easier and less fraught with peril. They sell and support their own version of Koha [yes one of those features is spell-check, do I have your attention now?] as well as an intranet product which enables blogging, photo sharing, and web site updating. If you must filter, they’ve got an open-source answer to that too. I’m still in the data-collection phase learning about LibLime but Koha is a tested dependable ILS and now that there is a supported version, I’d love to see more people jumping on the bandwagon.
IM in public libraries, Michael makes a module
One of the big topics in the chat after my talk was IM in libraries. Anyone from NJLA who is reading this, you will love what Michael Stephens has been working on: a training module for using IM in public libraries. Great timing.
google + libraries, happy at last
If you haven’t reloaded Google today, please do so. They’ve got a National Library Week logo up. This is the first year they’ve done this.
a cautionary tale about electronic resources
Karen posts about the unpleasant discovery she made that her library was paying twice for an electronic resource because of one small mistake. If someone as tech-sharp as Karen is having these sorts of troubles, imagine how daunting electronic resources can be to someone who is still new to the vast world of subscription services.
This scenario shows just how confusing electronics resources can be. Particularly if you have too many people responsible for different parts and communication doesn’t take place. Mistakes happen but the most important thing is that we learn from them. What I’ve learned from the experience is that electronic resources require a strict attention to detail, planning and constant evaluation. Hopefully by thorough analyzing our resources and keeping a stricter eye on them we will be able to plan more effectively and acquire resources to meet our needs.