Tag: blogs

Engaged Patrons

Posted on by jessamyn

There is no reason not to try this. EngagedPatrons.org “provide website services connecting public libraries and their patrons. We handle the programming; you reap the benefits of being able to offer your users a more engaging and interactive web presence.” The head honcho, Glenn Peterson, has been working on the Hennepin County Library website for a decade. A decade! Free to qualifying public libraries. Do you have a single thing to lose? No, you do not. [thanks rick]

good news in Oklahoma, for now

Posted on by jessamyn

State bill HB 2158 did not go to the state Senate. It passed in the House and the Senate did decide to hold a hearing on it. This is the bill to deny state funding to libraries that did not comply with a directive to restrict access to books with sexually explicit passages and homosexual themes to “adults only”. More information about Oklahoma libraries can be found on the librarystories blog and more generally at the Oklahoma Library Association website. Also, check out all these other Oklahoma library blogs (taken from the librarystories’ sidebar).

Adventures of a curious mind
Bartlesville Public Library blog
Karl the YoYo Librarian
Law Librarian Blog
Library Shrine
McAlester Public Library
Oklahoma Library Tech News
Oklahoma Writing Project
Orange Splot
Reading Oklahoma
SWOSU Library Blog
Slacker Librarian
Western Plains Libraries

for the ALA inclined

Posted on by jessamyn

Two notable posts for people even a little involved in ALA.

  • Leslie Burger reports on the situation in New Orleans, now just a few months before the annual conference scheduled to be there. As someone who went to Toronto during the SARS scare and enjoyed the lack of super-crowding (great for me, not so great for exhibitors) it will be interesting to see what this conference brings. And, on a related note, how nice is it to read a first hand report of what things look like down there that isn’t all press-releasey and absent any real information? This is the sort of things blogs are good at. This puts a compassionate and approachable face on ALA.

    You can’t stay away from New Orleans. You must witness first hand the destruction of nature and the failure of government to take care of its people. It is an American tragedy and who better to bear witness and tell the story than librarians. These people need our help, they need our money, they need our support. Now more than ever before you have a reason to attend an ALA conference.

  • Speaking of, my friend Michael Golrick is floating the idea of a Bloggers Roundtable at ALA. All we’d need is a hundred people and I don’t think this is much of a stretch. I’ve been a member of the Social Responsibilities Round Table on and off since I first started being involved in professional associations and it was a great way for me to learn about ALA and professional involvement generally from a position where I felt like I was among friends, or at least colleagues with similar interests. The New Members Round Table serves this purpose for a lot of library students, but I bet a Bloggers Roundtable would serve a similar function. One of the things that has always surprised me is how much I feel like I have in common with other bloggers in the library world — even ones that have different jobs, different outlooks and different approaches than I do — and how collegial I feel with many of them. The blogger get-togethers that happen at conferences are often the high point of these conferences for me.