Tag: library2.0

five talks in five days in two countries

Posted on by jessamyn

So. I just got back from a weeklong trip that took me to Somerville, Nova Scotia and environs, and the Manchester/Hooksett New Hampshire area. You can see some photos. This is what I did there.

  • I went to a brown bag lunch with the Dalhousie students which I mentioned a few days ago. It was really a good time. It was the first brown bag lunch session of the year and there was a big group of first and second year students there, as well as a few faculty members. People had done their homework and had really interesting questions to ask me from many different facets of what I do. We had a nice talk.
  • I helped Ryan Deschamps kick off the Learning 2.0 program he is doing at Halifax Public Libraries. I gave a talk on Learning 2.0 called Smart Tiny Tech and hung around for some of the other activities. The Learning 2.0 program is such a fun and non-threatening way to get people really digging under the hood learning some technology topics, I love seeing it being rolled out.
  • I gave a talk at NSLA about Library 2.0 topics, a little more “big picture” and a little less specific. I like doing this talk because I can always take the general outline and add local 2.0 examples so it doesn’t look like all 2.0 development is at Ann Arbor District Library and a few other techie-seeming places. My favorite new find was the Natural Resources Library of Canada (Ottowa) and their del.icio.us links.
  • Sunday I came home to the states, but not quite back to Vermont. Today I went to the NHLA Everything You Always Wanted to Know About 2.0 workshop where I presented with Andrea and Lichen. I gave a talk about Flickr and del.icio.us and one about Open Source Software which was a modification of Eric Goldhagen’s open source talk that I linked to here (direct link to his ppt). Then we stuck around for the gadget session and the geek session where we actually got a significant amount of hands-on time with the things we had been talking about. This was a really great and often-overlooked thing to be able to do.

Now I’m home and I’m uploading pictures and digging through backed up email and getting ready to start my work week tomorrow after some serious time off. Thanks to everyone who made the trip not just possible but enjoyable. update: Lichen has links to her talks and notes from the day up as well.

“web services” doesn’t mean just getting a better website

Posted on by jessamyn

Karen Coombs explains why web services isn’t just about a better website and also explains what some of the sacred cows are that keep library websites from being better.

[M]eeting your users where they are isn’t about making them come to the library website. In considering our long term virtual presence plans, the library website is a given. People who come to the site know we exist and want to use our services. To truly be successful we have to get our content into the path of the people who wouldn’t walk through our door (physical or virtual).

I like Karen’s talks about her work website specifically because she’s part of a larger team that all needs to work together to roll out new services to their faculty, student and staff population. I feel lucky because I often have carte blanche in the tiny sites for tiny libraries that I design. I also have very little reach with those sites. That’s okay for what I’m trying to do, but if I had to bring together multiple different stakeholders and make them happy with a website — including those designing, for example, for 800 x 600 resolution screens — I’m sure I’d find it very challenging indeed.

I’m en route to Nova Scotia today, speaking at NSLA and at a Learning 2.0 program with Ryan Deschamps, but when I get back I hope to show off my own collaborative project, turning the Vermont Library Association site into a bloggish group-maintained site from a static single-admin site. It’s gotten so that I have enough WordPress admin login pages to keep track of that I’ve shunted them into their own folder on my bookmarks toolbar. Exciting times!

2.0 keeping us connected

Posted on by jessamyn

Kathryn Greenhill has a great sensible post on why learning emerging techologies is part of every librarian’s job. Kathryn worked with other Australian librarians on Library2.0 on the loose, an unofficial unconference for Western Australian library folks (and a few from other places). Kathryn is one of the many international librarians that I feel comfortable calling a colleague because even though we’ve only met in person once, I see her “around” many of the online places that I frequent and keep up with her via blog, twitter, flickr etc. I know this is sort of old news online, but I found it again via Manage This which is quickly becoming one of my favorite library blogs.

yes, I speak 2.0…

Posted on by jessamyn

Ryan Deschamps has an interesting and thoughful post about his impressions of people’s tendency to shift “from a rational criticism of the so-called Library 2.0 movement/manifesto follow[ed by] an irrational trashing of anything having to do with Web 2.0 services and user-centered library services” The dilemma, simply stated, is when you see someone who has a critique of something you care about and are knowledgeable about — could be Library 2.0, could be tech support, could be apple pies — how do you inform or correct their misunderstandings without seeming like a prostyletizer or part of the Apple Pie Bandwagon? Or should you? Anyhow, the original posts that spawned Ryan’s post was over at the Annoyed Librarian. I left a comment.

NH – 2.0 talk in September

Posted on by jessamyn

I was trying to figure out a fix for my sidebar calendar and was testing it out with one of my upcoming events which, thanks to my general cluelessness wound up posted to the front page, not queued for later. So I’ve fixed some of the erroneous info and am reposting it official-like. If you are interested in this at all, contact Andrea Thorpe at the Richards Free Library and check out their nifty blog while you are stopping by.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lib 2.0
in Hookset, New Hampshire

9:00 – 9:30 Registration & Coffee
9:30 What is WEB 2.0 and why it’s important/appropriate in libraries – Lichen Rancourt
10:00 Flickr & del.icio.us – Jessamyn West
10:30
11:00 Library 2.0 catalog solutions – Lichen Rancourt
11:30 Open source replacements for stuff you already use – Jessamyn West
12:00 Box Lunch
1:00 Technology planning. How to choose and implement what you have seen today within the limits of staff time, library budgets and patron needs – Andrea Mercado
2:00- 3:00 GEEK Sessions – Our three presenters (joined by Bobbi
Slossar) will break into small groups to answer your specific questions
about social software issues.
3:00 – 3:30 GEEK Session discoveries and wrap up – Mary Ann List