my talk at UAZ SIRLS

I’m back from Tucson/Phoenix. I had a great time getting to spend the day with the students and faculty of the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. I gave a variant of my digital divide talk The Information Poor & the Information Don’t Care Small Libraries and the Digital Divide (the notes look the same but all the talks are really really different). While I was in Arizona I also got to see the downtown branch of the Phoenix Public Library, the North Valley Regional Library (my first big suburban library!) and the Tucson Pima Public Library. I also did a quick walk around the University of Arizona library but got quickly distracted by the amazing art exhibit Reading Our Remains (waxed and sliced books, fascinating) and didn’t take a lot of other pictures.

Indiana bound

For any librarians in the Indiana area — Bloomington and Indianapolis specifically — I’ll be giving two talks next week. On Thursday the 15th I’ll be talking about libraries and technology with students of the library school at Indiana University [flyer1, flyer 2] at 6 pm. Then I scoot off to the Indiana Library Federation Reference Division conference where I’ll be talking about… libraries and technology on Friday at 10 am [flyer]. Right now I am newly back from a six day trip to New York City where I went to a wedding, visited a new library and celebrated my birthday. I just discovered Eric Lease Morgan’s Keynote from ILF annual So you want a new website. He quotes Ranganathan and says really sane things about usability testing, specifically about the idea of ascertaining success.

NHLA day one, first talk

I’m giving two talks at NHLA. I gave the keynote today — I LOVE getting to talk about big ideas, keynotes are fun — and now it is online: Until We’re All Robots: Sensible Approaches to Technology in Libraries. It won’t make too much sense unless you look at the printable version with the hidden notes, but you’ll notice I am starting to get a little craftier with the presentations.