I’m sure I’ll be dribbling out these little notices for the next few months, but I just learned that Bill Ivey has been appointed “to lead the Obama transition team with responsibility for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.” Here’s an interesting article about Ivey discussing how cultural pushes by administrations are not seem in the same way as actual public policies.
Category: librarians
Workshopping
I am always at a loss when I do things called “workshops” and people don’t have computers. Replicating the 2.0 world [or heck even the 1.0 world] using pens and flip charts seems a little silly, but I’m generally a tough one to please when dealing with participatory talks/events. I don’t mind interacting, but I like to think it will be worth my while and not embarass me. I like Andrea’s Blog Her “speed dating” idea. Gets everyone moving, a little, doesn’t embarass them, makes them think.
If it were my workshop I think I’d have everyone be in two lines and person #1 would say “I work at [$NAME_OF_LIBRARY]” person #2 would say “I know [$THING_I_KNOW] about [$NAME_OF_LIBRARY]” and then they’d move on, 60 seconds, bang. Point being, I think we sometimes have a hard time understanding what our institutions look like to people from outside them and from the outside it can be tough to know what things look like on the inside. I was showing off some Kansas libraries using Twitter this week and naming one library sent a few people in the audience into giggles. I had no idea why. They explained later that it was because of some recent drama concerning the library and the local consortia that I would have had no way of knowing about. Knowing about it was actually a neat thing, more stories, more data.
If anyone’s been in a workshop with an activity — offline if possible though online is fine — that you’ve really liked, please feel free to share in the comments. I’m always looking for new ideas.
Brewster Kahle at TED, discussing free digital libraries
“I’m a librarian. What I am trying to do is bring all of the world’s knowledge to as many people as want to read it. The idea of using technology is perfect for us.” Brewster Kahle gives a twenty minute talk about free culture and libraries and digitzation at TED.
something fun for a rainy Tuesday
Hi there — I’ve been answering a lot of Palin-related email over the past few days and getting ready for some upcoming travel. I found this link during non-work-related web surfing and enjoyed the fact that it’s a fun, possibly awesome YouTube video that got the attention of the Guardian’s film critic and it was put together by Alonzo Mosley (pseud.) a self-described librarian in Florida who did the research that makes it so terrific. Here’s his blog where he’s also recently posted a centennial edition of the 100 movies, 100 quotes video.
please send Sandy Berman a get well card
Jenna Freedman has information about the serious car accident Sandy Berman was in. Please send him a get well card, or if you’re not postally-enabled, leave a comment for him on Jenna’s blog.