What happens to your library book before it gets to the shelves? This Flickr photoset can walk you through it. I learned bunches of things. Thanks to the Hatcher Library at the University of Michigan and Alexis for putting it all together.
NH – 2.0 talk in September
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
progressive library skillshare – Sept 7-8 in Pittsburgh
If you are in or near the Pittsburgh area and would like to share ideas with a group of interesting socially responsible librarians, consider going to the Progressive Library Skillshare. It’s my birthday weekend, so I’ll be someplace else most likely but it would be on my todo list otherwise.
Carnival of the Infosciences #77 at my house, y’all come!
Chad strongarm^H^H^H talked me into hosting the wandering Infosciences Carnival which was probably something I should have done a long time ago anyhow. You can participate too, it’s incredibly easy. Send a link to the best library stuff you’ve been reading this week, either via del.icio.us using the carninfo tag or this submission form. Need to know more/ Check out the submission guidelines on the wiki, or just ask me or Chad. Thanks for contributing.
the poor and tech training and gaming
The Library Link of the Day today is an article in the Chicago Tribune called Training for the Poor Moves into the Computer Age. It’s an odd combination of two points
1. The digital divide is becoming more and more about technology literacy and not about technology access.
2. Gaming on computers is an important part of attaining that technology literacy.
I don’t know much about point #2. I like games generally but I am not a gamer (save online Scrabble which I suspect may not count). With a few exceptions most of the people I hang out with aren’t gamers so I’ve rarely been in a cultural area that is gaming-immersive. I’m curious, but it’s one of those things that falls outside the “things I have time for” circle. Jenny Levine has some good points in the article and I think the fact that ALA is mentioned in the same article as poor people needing technological literacy for finding better jobs and escaping the cycle of poverty is great PR for libraries.
That said, the article is confusing to me somewhat. It seems to be taking two disparate ideas and mashing them together as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I get the points that gaming and teaching technology through gaming is a great way to help kids with critical thinking skills and problem solving. However I strongly do not think that the best way to help older people — perhaps my age and up — learn technology has anything to do with gaming at all. So, the people who are in dead-end jobs and need to gain some level of tech proficiency to move to better jobs, they’re not the gaming demographic. I think, however, that as more younger people engage with technology they will bring gaming with them as they become people in my age bracket and that’s going to be an interesting shift. So, kudos for even talking about poverty and technology literacy, and nice job with xplaining why gaming is important, but I still wish this had been two separate (longer) articles instead of this one.