What is the future of the library? is a video that presents the library as a solution to the digitial divide, providing access and empowerment to those who otherwise would not have the access or the ability to effectively utilize the internet.

At first the video may seem to be all about buzzwords, but by the end you should have some thought-provoking questions forming within your mind.  I recommend at least two viewings, and quite a bit of time to think about where we might be headed.

This is a great example of asking excellent questions in order to move the conversation forward.

found via The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian

The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies is a British site “established by Jane Hart as a place to keep track of learning trends, technologies and tools.”

Most impressive, at first glance, are the lists of free tools and resources:

• 25 Tools every learning professional should have in their toolbox – and all for free!
• 100+ Free Website to find out about anything and everything.
• 100+ Language Learning Websites.
• Top Tools for Learning 2009.

Although the focus of the site is education, most of what is featured can benefit both library staff and patrons.

found via MLxperience

Notes from last month’s OLE (Open Library Environment) Regional Workshop are on LibShare, and they are interesting to scan through, especially the comments.

I found this through the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog, and looked into it because of two quotes he included with his post:

• With print items, we’re trying to give people access; with electronic trying to keep them out.
• Isn’t it interesting that users from other libraries have borrowed print books delivered to them, but must travel to another library to get access to their electronic items.

In addition, I will add this interesting tidbit from the same set of responses:

• It used to be about selecting high quality materials, but now have to teach evaluation of available materials.

I think that sums up much of the transition we face in the library world – how to filter useful and usable information in a way that makes it useful and usable for our patrons (aren’t you glad I didn’t say “users”).  We are drinking from the fire hydrant, and the pressure is increasing!

Non-Hierarchical Management is an article by Aaron Swartz on the Palinet Leadership Network, and it is well worth reading.

If you are a manager, read it with an eye towards improving how you work with your team.

If you are part of a team, read it with an eye towards improving how you work with your manager, as well as the rest of your team.  Who knows, you may be in a position to manage someday… read it with this in mind.

Whatever your position, you can improve the quality, quantity, and enjoyment of your work by implementing some of these suggestions.  Even if you are the only one applying these lessons, your attitude and approach will be the better for it.

found via Walt at Random

The debate has been going on for years, and has recently flared up again on PUBLIB : Does a person need the MLIS degree to do the work of a librarian?

LISNews has decided to take a poll (and encourage discussion)….

Comment : I have been thinking about this issue, and related questions, for many years.  Because of budgetary pressure, support staff have been taking on duties that in the past were considered the role of librarians.  Depending on the library (size, budget, structure, role) there are different answers as to what should and should not be done by various people.

I maintain that training is the key.  The better everyone knows everyone else’s job, the more efficient the library will be.  This means that there should be very few “walls” between job duties.  Personnel issues (hiring, firing, etc.) and certain confidential issues (financial accounts, security) should be kept within a walled garden (but never with only one person!).  Otherwise, everyone should know at lease something about all other duties performed in the library.

This leads to another point : training and knowledge need to be respected at all levels.  Understand and respect that which the MLIS librarian knows and applies to his or her job.  There are years of training behind that degree, and those of us who learn on the job (and on our own) would do well to keep that in mind.  Conversely, librarians should keep in mind that support staff bring a great deal to the table, and it is impossible to know just what we have to offer until you open yourselves to our input.

I worked as a technician in a pharmacy for eight years, and was mistaken for a pharmacist more times than I can recall. Each time was a sobering reminder to never allow my actions or speech to exceed my knowledge, because it carried far more weight than my simple certification could bear.

In libraries, we all need to heed that advice.  Understand what you know; more importantly, understand what you don’t know.  Being a librarian doesn’t mean that you know more about someone’s job simply because that job is support staff.  It doesn’t even mean that you know more about esoteric “library stuff” than someone without the degree.

The same goes, as you can guess, in the reverse.  The key is respect.  Respect each other.  Respect the job.  Respect the degree.  Respect the person’s training and knowledge.  Respect everyone, and expect the same in return.

Make that your mantra : Respect and Expect.

100 Free Open Courseware Classes About Open Source Everything is a post on the BSchool.com Blog.  Their list is quite comprehensive, with something for just about anyone.

In addition, the blog has a thing for “100 Free…” lists, from resource for doing business in China, to Ivy League business courses.  They just started up last month, but I think this might be one of those resources that will provide answers for questions beyond the obvious business school related information.

found via an e-mail from Kelly Sonora (affiliated with BSchool.com blog)

A Simple Book Repair Manual is a web-based guide created and hosted by the Dartmouth College Library.  It covers what a library needs to set up a toolkit and make straightforward repairs.

Conservation Book Repair : A training manual by Artemis BonaDea is a pdf formatted book from 1995 (200 pages – complete 12MB pdf here) written by a Conservation Technician (who is now Curator of the Alaska Heritage Museum).

Bookbinding and the Conservation of books : A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, hosted on the Stanford University web site, is exactly as described, a dictionary of terminology.

Add these to your collection of useful links!

found via MetaFilter (warning : as addictive a blog as exists anywhere)

A couple of posts about sandboxes have caught my eye:

• LISNews posted about Peter Morville (writer of Ambient Findability, which if you haven’t read – you should) and his Flickr “sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns.”
• Roy Tennant writes about the benefits of libraries having a sandbox to try out new software and technology, in particular he points out the University of Cincinnati’s sandbox.

I have, in a somewhat disorganized manner, been creating and working with sandboxes for several years.  Libology is, at least in its first phase, my effort to make a structured sandbox for my own efforts, with an eye towards demonstrating how various tools can work for libraries.  These have been scattered throughout several other domains, and one of my first tasks will be to combine what I have done so far under one domain.

Web hosting is inexpensive.  A site that can run blogs, discussion lists, wikis, CMSs, and a great many other helpful tools can be had for about $5 per month.  An individual or group, taking things one step at a time, can learn a lot from simply getting a site and setting up various software.  There is no better way, in my opinion, to learn about open source and web 2.0 than to jump in the sandbox and start playing!

The Librarian Song (YouTube video) is, well, a song… about librarians… specifically about how librarians train users (Show it to them, do it with them, and then the user can do it themself).

And above all… it is really funny (as well as slightly risque).

found via Extensible Librarian

Recipes for a 5-Star Library is the latest “cookbook” from the MaintainIT project.  The cookbooks are pdf files that are free to use

The project focuses on public computers in libraries, and their Library Spotlight articles are drawn from real-world examples.  The resources they provide are top-notch and collaboration at their best.

If you work with your library’s public workstations, check out what they have to offer.  Tips and solutions from dozens of libraries await you!

found via Free Range Librarian

The Library of Congress  web site has a collection of webcasts that they use for docent training.  If you would like to learn about some of the collections within in the library, this is a fantastic way to do so!

from ResourceShelf

Within Range , a training game from Carnegie Mellen University Libraries, has several strikes against it : it is flash-based, it only trains in LC classification, and it was rated “worst game” on reddit.com.

Otherwise, it is a pretty good resource for people learning to shelf LC cataloged items!

found via LISNews

10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008—via Web 2.0 is a webinar being held next week that promises to be very informative.  The focus is on social networking and how libraries and library staff can approach new technologies for improving services.  They will be archiving the presentation, so those of us who aren’t available to view it live can have a chance to see it.

I will stress that Web 2.0 (and Library 2.0) is best approached piecemeal.  Pick and choose those elements that will work for you and your situation.  Do not be afraid to try something new, to experiment with that which is in place, and to abandon that which isn’t working for you.  In the end you will have learned quite a bit about your library, your patrons, and technology – and everyone will be better off for it!

However, some library people just don’t like the word Webinar….

from a post by Ed Rossman (the webinar presenter) on Web4Lib

Larry Ferlazzo’s blog is titled appropriately : Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day for Teaching ELL, ESL, and  EFL.   What caught my attention is that he is compiling lists of web resources that contain great sites that should be kept in mind not only for a variety of reference questions, regardless of the English language ability of the person asking the question, but for the many great tools and resources that we can use in library training and education.

A few of his 2007 lists:

• Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education
• Best Science Websites for Students and Teachers
• Best Online Learning Games
• Best Social Studies Websites
• Best Search Engines for ESL/EFL Learners

There are more beyond these, and his blog is a constant review/overview/discussion of web sites and resources.

found via TechCrunch

Karen Coyle has written a post on Coyle’s InFormation that I feel greatly helps to explain why it can be so complex to structure bibliographic information.

I first encountered Entity-Relationships (note:  right now this link is not a great introduction to the concept, but provides some good examples) when learning to create queries and reports from a Voyager database.  It was intimidating, to say the least, but was one of several steps that proved to be extremely helpful.

The diagrams, for whatever they represent, usually mirror the complexity of the system they represent.  They oftentimes are the most effective way to show this.

Understanding this complexity in bibliographic structure is important, I feel, because it allows us library types to better evaluate the tools that we use and select.  An OPAC search screen, or an ILS module, or any program we use is more useful when its structure better fits the entity-relationship that already exists for our materials.  A spreadsheet is great for certain types of information and presentation; a word processor for others.  A program that doesn’t fit the structure so well tends to be “clunky” to use in that context.

Read her post.  Repeat as necessary.  Don’t feel that you need to memorize the detail, or be able to re-create her diagrams.  Simply get the gist of what she has put into words and pictures, and know that it will help you in your daily work, and in your understanding of how things work.

WebJunction has launched a Rural Library Sustainability Online Course, and it’s free!

Their site has the following synopsis of the course:

• Visit each of the seven areas of interest critical to sustaining public access computing in your library.
• View case studies of rural libraries that have developed and completed an action plan in each of the areas.
• Create an action plan for your library by assessing your library’s current state and selecting achievable six month goals.
• Follow manageable steps from peer-recommended resources to accomplish your goals.
• Explore each area of the course at your own pace and return to any lesson at your own convenience.

found on BlogJunction

No brand new flashy sites in this post; just a small collection of links on how one deals with the demands of time, projects and learning:

Big or Small? — Jen Riley at the Indiana University Digital Library Program has a post regarding doing a few big vs. many small projects.

Nicole’s Burnout Blues — Karen Schneider, a.k.a. Free Range Librarian, gives her tips on preventing burnout.

Three Hard Things — new guy at OCLC Roy Tennant’s follow-up to his Five Easy Pieces essay three years ago.

Each of these pieces speak to me, as I am preparing to start a relatively involved project that will require a fair amount of time management.  It could work, mainly because the time involved can be very flexible (and who needs sleep when you have a project?).

However, most everyone I know is trying to balance their time, effort, energy, and resources.  Perhaps there is a helpful nugget or two for everyone who follows the links….

A post, Getting change to stick, at Karen Coomb’s blog, has me thinking about change and growth, but not in an institutional sense, but in more of a personal sense.

I think people can fall into the same trap:  we push our envelopes, learning, trying new things, and cannot perceive the subtler changes and growth that occur.  It can take hindsight to see what we have learned and how we have developed.

The trick is to keep pushing that envelope, keep trying and learning, and not to lose that long-term perspective that seems to be critical.

Chinese Learning Objects, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and provided by the National Foreign Language Center, are online materials for learning to read Chinese.  The good news is that, starting in July 2007, the materials will be available for no charge online.

If you have a desire to learn to read Chinese, or know someone who might, this is a great opportunity.

from ResourceShelf

Advice to a slightly less experienced geek librarian is written by Daniel Chudnov at One Big Library, and is an excellent essay with good advice for anyone exploring new ways to do things in libraries.  I can vouch for a few points that he makes, and will try to be prepared to follow the rest!

from One Big Library