Submitted by Michael Stephens on July 28, 2006 - 1:19pm
"Another benefit of using Flickr at your library and tagging your photos with your library's name and location is that it gets you found in the great pool of all of the photos in Flickr. Maybe someone is searching Flickr for his or her hometown and discovers images of the local library and learns of services or programs he or she didn't know about... Participating in this type of social software community is relatively inexpensive, can offer presence, and it's fun!"—Michael Stephens, "Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software," LTR (42:4) Read More »
Submitted by Karen G. Schneider on July 26, 2006 - 11:48pm
This week it's hot as a pistol across the United States, and as I sit in my office without A/C, a feeble fan drying the sweat on my face, I'm grumpy. Grumpy enough to line up a few peeves against the wall and slap them around.
Open-source software
Yes, I know, open source is a saint and you'd let your sister or brother marry it. But I hate the idea that for some librarians if a particular software is open source, hands down, it's the right choice. The right choice is the software that meets the mission. While the principles behind open source are admirable, when an open-source product doesn't meet your library's needs, your first obligation is to your users.
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Submitted by Tom Peters on July 26, 2006 - 10:39am
Two news items that scurried across my attention in July have led me to conclude that, in this era of overlapping eras, we have entered yet another age.
The first item was an industry report that Apple shipped more than eight million iPod devices in the second quarter of 2006. That's almost three million per month or 100,000 per day, and the second quarter is not a big gift-giving quarter, unless Apple packaged all those iPods in large plastic Easter eggs. (Remember, you read it here first.)
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Submitted by Tom Peters on July 17, 2006 - 2:37pm
It's already mid-July and I'm still thinking about the programs, news, and events from the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans three weeks ago. This means either that it was an unusually important conference, or that I'm slow on the uptake and/or have serious conference closure issues.
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Submitted by Teresa Koltzenburg on July 13, 2006 - 3:45pm
On the ever-informative LibraryLaw Blog Wednesday, Mary Minow posts a three-question interview with the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) executive director Beth Yoke about DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006). In it, Yoke provides her 2 cents on the proposed legislation and her experience at the hearing. (Minow has stated that she believes the "law is blatantly unconstitutional," but warns, "that doesn't mean it won't get passed.")
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Submitted by Tom Peters on July 7, 2006 - 12:18pm
 On June 26th I caught the tail end of Chris Anderson's standing-room-only talk in New Orleans during the ALA Annual Conference. Chris was discussing the "long tail" phenomenon in the new business-and-economics climate of the Internet age. His book on this topic was just published, appropriately titled The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
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