Month: March 2005

way to make a good impression, librarians!

Posted on by jessamyn

No seriously. Found this blog post from Fil, a member of the “video game community” talking about meeting some librarians at a symposium about the future of libraries.

I imagined droning on about the Dewey Decimal System, and waxing rueful over the “good old days” before the internet ruined research.

I could not have been more wrong.

The people (at my table, at least) were dynamic, technically savvy people who are trying very hard to keep information “alive.” I had some great conversations about user interface, podcasting, RSS feeds, and the digitization of collections.

be prepared for anything when you present.

Posted on by jessamyn

Andrea’s at CiL and has some tips for presenters that are right on the money. I went to show off one of our library databases at an elementary school yesterday. Everything was fine until we got to the database login page. For some reason IE wouldn’t let us in, the tech guy had gone home, and no one else knew if there was a firewall or virus software on the machine. Fortunately, I had brought all the screenshots of the database that I had used when I was demonstrating it on public access TV. Oddly, the demonstration search I had used for the TV show just happened to be the same as the name of the town I was in. I walked away from that talk looking well-prepared and smart instead of tech-clueless and frustrated. And that IE problem we were having? We switched to Safari as an afterthought when I was on my way out, and we logged in to the database no problem, vexing!

ala elections

Posted on by jessamyn

ALA Elections are starting this week. I’ve requested a paper ballot again this year just to see how things work for the less technologically adept. The vendor running the elections is distributing all the emails with the login/password combinations for voting [yes, you read that right, passwords in email] over the next week to keep people from reading their email and then going to vote all at once, thus overloading the server, according to email we got on the Council list. Only one candidate has a blog this year, Leslie Burger. You may remember that the candidate without a blog last year was Michael Gorman.

Movers! Shakers! Bloggers! Others!

Posted on by jessamyn

It’s really great to see the Library Journal Movers and Shakers awards include so many colleagues not just from the blogging world — Aaron and Michael — but other parts of the library world I interact with when I step away from the keyboard, like Veronda Pitchford from Chicago and Kim Charlson from Perkins School for the Blind, a place I rememebr visiting when I was a little girl.