Michelle Boule's Posts

There are seasons for everything. Seasons of life. Seasons of time. During this time of year, people often think about things for which they are thankful and things that they can give others to make them smile. I am thankful for the opportunity that ALA TechSource has given me. The opportunity to spread my wings, work with some wonderful people, and have fun. Sadly, I believe my season here to be over. There are many new writers in this space and I know their voices will keep me from being missed too much. In parting, I would like to leave you with this post: A Geek's Letter to Santa.

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As a new mom, I’ve been thinking nonstop about family. I look at my son and wonder what I will tell him about his family. Genealogy has been a quest for every generation, and has become much more popular in recent years. Still, until now there have not been many online tools that could map out family trees.

Enter Geni. With the tagline "Everyone's related," Geni takes family relations and adds all the bells and whistles the Internet has to offer. The best part is that this tool is free, user friendly, and easy on the eyes. It was built by former employees of PayPal, eGroups (which was bought by Yahoo! in 2000), Tribe, and eBay and has many design features that users will find familiar. Read More »

When you are training a dog, you do not start with something complicated. You begin with something small and easy: sit. From sit, you move on to tricks that build on that one skill, like shake and lie down. You never start with lie down or shake, because a dog has to be sitting to do those things.

When we teach children to read, we sing them the ABCs first and then teach them how the letters form words. We do not show them words and then teach them the alphabet. We know that to learn a skill there is a logical progression of learning. We know this, but often, when dealing with technology, we forget about it. Like all other knowledge acquisition, learning how to use technology tools should follow a logical progression. We should start with cornerstones before constructing the building. If you are a technology trainer, consider what cornerstones are already in your staff's arsenal when planning a training. Read More »

Incorporating social software into libraries and the idea that the OPAC just may suck, have been discussed at length on this blog by various authors. Incorporating Web 2.0 ideas or technologies into your library's web page may be difficult for many reasons. If you are a school librarian, your obstacles increase exponentially. Many of the innovations available to other libraries are not accessible to school libraries.

There is a new tool, a multi-use platform really, that has been built by a small team in Rochester, New York which has the potential to greatly impact school libraries and their ability to implement social tools into their OPACs and websites. I wanted to share the project, called Fish4Info, with others. The leader of the team that created the program is Christopher Harris.
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In the past few months, I have had the privilege to work with some amazing school librarians. Many of them want to begin incorporating more technology into their libraries, but are hampered by filters and lack of knowledge about the available tools on the Web. For some, even the most basic tools are blocked by overzealous IT and administrations. Read More »

While in Denver for LITA Forum recently, I read an article in the Denver Post entitled “We are our friends, our friends are us: MySpace and its offspring have transformed our link' thinking.” I found this article interesting for two reasons.

First, the author, John Wenzel, stated that MySpace will make $1 billion in ad revenue this year. One billion dollars. I had no idea, but I am not surprised. With all of the money we spend on things everyday, why wouldn't MySpace's 200 million members be clicking on those ads?

The second reason, and the one that really caught my attention, was this line:
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I should begin this post with the disclaimer that I am not a member of either of the most popular social networking sites, MySpace or Facebook. Depending upon your definition of "social networking," I am a member of Ning, Pownce, del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter, LibraryThing, Dopplr, and probably a few others I have missed or that I have forgotten about. I use all of them with varying degrees of frequency.
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The picture at the top of this post is from the game night at the Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. These librarians are playing Wii Tennis and being coached by Giz Womack. The gaming night, which happened the first night of the conference, helped define the atmosphere that made this conference different.

This was a symposium about games. Games mean play and there was an atmosphere of play to everything. There were three keynotes on Sunday and every speaker talked about the transformative power of games. We spent all afternoon soaking up knowledge from people thinking big things about games and then we were set loose on the games themselves.
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This is the second part of a series and long in coming. Apologies are in order, and I hope I will be forgiven. In the previous segment, I discussed the Five Weeks to a Social Library project and why offering free online education was important. Today, I want to highlight a few of the tools that can make creating a free or cheap online education portal possible.
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A post from the field of Computers In Libraries 2007.

Lee Rainie, from the Pew Internet and American Life Project was the first speaker at this year's Computers in Libraries conference. His talk, as expected, was bursting with numbers that illustrated how people use and interact on the Internet. On Thursday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new study called “Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace”. As a result, much of Rainie's talk focused on young people.
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