Author: jessamyn

hi – 24apr

Posted on by jessamyn

I’m polishing my Simmons talk today. I give a few types of talks regularly, but the talks are never the same. They can be loosely grouped as follows:

  • new technologies/ten tech tips for libraries
  • the information poor/digital divide and technology in libraries
  • social responsibiltiy and technology in libraries

Astute readers will recognize that, at their core, these talks all cover the same three topics with different weight given to each topic each time. Put another way they’re

  • TECHNOLOGY, politics, libraries
  • technology, politics, LIBRARIES
  • technology, POLITICS, libraries

I like giving talks, and I’m happy that I now have the time to really do it right. If you’d like me to come talk to your library, your library association or your group of library fans, read my faq and drop me a line.

ALA Annual Wiki – by Meredith

Posted on by jessamyn

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.

webjunction has a blog

Posted on by jessamyn

WebJunction has a blog. I mentioned them a few weeks back taking issue with some of their suggestions for smaller libraries and got a fairly nice note back from them encouraging direct feedback on things that could help them. Apparently they’re soliciting a lot of input in making some decisions about design and usability issues. If you use WJ at all, consider giving them your ideas. [technobib]

hi – 22apr

Posted on by jessamyn

Hi and happy Earth Day. I’ll be heading down to Boston to speak at Simmons this Monday evening and then I think I’ll extend my stay to see Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikepedia, speak at Harvard Tuesday evening. I’ve been delving more and more into the Wikipedia world lately, lending a hand updating some of the Vermont town pages and uploading some public domain images to illustrate some of those pages.

The debate we’ve seen happening over the authority, or lack thereof, of collaborative information systems such as Wikipedia is just scratching the surface of the debates we’ll be seeing in the years to come. Librarians ignore Wikipedia, and by extension the new face of information, at their peril. Keep in mind I’m not saying that we all have to run to the Internet to answer our questions, just that if we fail to see the impact these systems are having, and the openness and transparency they bring with them, then we fail to learn something crucial about the downsides to the inflexible authority of print. Downsides that people have been living with and taking as a given all these years, and now may no longer have to.