Submitted by Daniel A. Freeman on November 26, 2008 - 11:23am
Before we take our Thanksgiving break, I thought I’d leave you with these very cool images from the Wheeler Taft Abbett, Sr. branch of the Pima County Public Library in Tucson, Arizona.
Submitted by Kate Sheehan on November 24, 2008 - 4:52pm
Online life is fraught with drama. We all have stories of unexpectedly adolescent awkwardness erupting in our digital lives. Online friending can get weird enough when you're stumbling across high school frenemies, but toss in your coworkers, work friends, personal friends and your boss? Yikes!
The natural extension of the biblioblogosphere has been librarians on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the like. Reading a blog is easy, but trying to decide who to follow on Twitter or move into your “Friends” group on Flickr is hard. It’s confusing enough to warrant presentations on how to manage our online identities. Read More »
Submitted by Jason Griffey on November 21, 2008 - 11:59am
In a Techsource post a couple of months ago, I talked about the hot video games for the Fall and holiday season. This time around, I want to introduce readers to a type of game that they might not be aware of: the Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. ARG's are becoming more and more popular, and libraries need to be aware of them and ready to embrace them. Read More »
Submitted by Daniel A. Freeman on November 19, 2008 - 11:34am
Last week, you may have read Tom Peters’ post on the new, green Mancos Public Library in Colorado.It’s very exciting to see libraries and other institutions around the country making a concerted effort to build green—we get to watch the future of technology, libraries and architecture unite right before our eyes.
While it’s inspiring to see these new buildings springing up, it is important to remember that it takes people to get there. The exciting developments in places like Mancos cannot be an excuse for complacency—librarians must take the greening of our profession into our own hands through action and advocacy. For every librarian in a new, green building, there are dozens of us still stuck in older buildings using up financial and ecological resources, and usually with no plans for a new building.
Saturday was National Gaming Day, and the kids and I braved the cold, wet weather to check out the Wii games at the Village Branch of the Lexington Public Library. The staff report that the crowd was smaller than other, weeknight gaming events, but they were no less enthusiastic! The kids were playing Wii Bowling when we first arrived; here is the group's reaction to the final score.
Next up was Guitar Hero (also Wii). This one was so popular that the kids had to draw numbers to see who would go first. The rocking party was still going strong when we left. The newly-expanded Village branch is located in the Village shopping plaza, on the west side of Lexington. Gaming events are held in the Teen Center; the library also includes a small collection of materials, easily-accessible "airport" restrooms, and a newly-expanded meeting room and computer lab. The four-year-old library, one of six branches in the medium-sized Central Kentucky city, also boasts bilingual (Spanish/English) staff.
Submitted by Daniel A. Freeman on November 18, 2008 - 10:36am
If you are a regular reader of business or technology news (or for that matter, business technology news), you’ve probably heard a bit about the Google Book Search lawsuit that has been making its way through the courts over the past few years. In 2005, a group that includes The Author's Guild, Pearson's Penguin unit, McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster sued Google, which had begun a massive book-digitization project a year earlier. The plaintiffs claimed that by digitizing these books and making them searchable online, Google had committed copyright violation.
Submitted by Michael Stephens on November 17, 2008 - 7:33pm
As I reflected on my 2008 Information Commons field trips, I realized how important these spaces are to information literacy, to the relevance of the library and to the mission of the institution itself.
In "The Comedy of the Commons," Dr. Carol M. Rose describes the commons as a place where each person adds more value. In our LIS701 course here at Dominican, we use Rose to illustrate the potential and usefullness of common spaces in relation to different types of libraries and what they might mean to their users. According to Rose, "The more who join and use the commons, the greater the enjoyment of each participant."
This was entirely evident in the series of field trips I made this year to visit library spaces that had integrated the idea of the commons. Read More »
Submitted by Patrick Hogan on November 14, 2008 - 8:38am
Saturday, November 15, is National Gaming Day @ Your Library, and gamers are gearing up for major events around the country. Hasbro donated their game Pictureka to hundreds of libraries nationwide, an effort coordinated by ALA. Our goal is to get a mind-blowing number of people to play the same game on the same day. Wizards of the Coast offered 1,000 libraries a choice of their games Dungeon and Dragons or Magic: the Gathering. ALA Editions author Eli Neiburger and his colleagues at the Ann Arbor District Library will be running a national videogame tournament on their GT System.
At ALA TechSource, we recently heard from an old friend who is busy promoting gaming in libraries once again. Former ALA TechSource editor Teresa Koltzenburg launched this blog, recruiting Jenny Levine, Michael Stephens, and Karen Schneider. It was Teresa and Jenny who initiated the Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium.
Teresa quietly left ALA in March 2007. At best, our career paths take us on switchbacks where skill and knowledge gained is expressed in new ways. Here's what Teresa is up to now.
Submitted by Patrick Hogan on November 13, 2008 - 10:20am
I've been working backstage for some time now as manager of ALA Publishing's Online Resources unit, which in addition to ALA TechSource includes Guide to Reference and RDA: Resource Description & Access. With loads of help from Jenny Levine, not to mention Joe the Drupal developer, I coordinated the migration of the blog to the Drupal platform. I recruited Jason, Kate, and Cindi to the blogging team and hired Dan . . . but I've never posted to the blog! I'll be writing the occasional post, mostly reporting on other ALA Publishing projects. More soon. Read More »
