notes / links

Just some things I want to keep up with..

http://nancydowd.wordpress.com/

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/yalsa.cfm

http://popculturebookreview.blogspot.com/

http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/

http://www.coloradolibraries.org

http://www.coloradolibraries.org/2009/04/22/new-guidelines-for-donating-to-state-prison-libraries/

http://njla.pbwiki.com/Conference+2009

http://nancydowd.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/seth-godin-the-difference-between-a-show-and-a-story/

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/popculturebookreview

godin's bald head

ted talks

flash drives

CMS in the abstract

airplane emergency landing theatre

serendipity purposed

chaos & magic

info-economics.

but the whole thing with the power of Golden Arches

catching up on TLA

by way of the blog and notes sent from friends...

http://tla2009.wordpress.com/

  
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...
Woody Evans
 http://woodyevans.com/
  Writing & Research for Hire

infosthetics messing me up

like I know he can.

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/04/world_builder_the_future_of_interacting_with_holographic_tools.html#extended

now I'm thinking abt customizability (why not infinite?) and control.  And how control is pyschosis.  Why not infinite psychoses for an Augmented Reality or VR world?  Huh?

Do we have psycho sprouts jumping up now in the seedbeds of MySpace?

blech.

lib inst cms's

Thinking about instructional CMS... Libguides looks might smooth, very nice. Austin Community College seems to know how to use the tools.  But is the brand worth the money?

Now looking at Library a la Carte from Oregon State...

http://alacarte.library.oregonstate.edu/

Seems to get the same job done.  Free & free, too.

But I'll keep reading and looking at yr CMS ventures, looking for gaps, failings, and wonderful things.  We're starting to wake up after 13 years now, and so we be late somewhat to the libguides action and other things.  I hold out hope that we may still woo our peeps even coming so late to the dancefloor like.

The Thing seems to be to me right now that I need to talk about the web with the web.  I need to talk about web tools (and even our dustybooks are found with a webtool) with web tools.  McLuhan and wot-wot: it's not just steam and bluster.  The medium, the medium.  If I keep talking websearch technique with paper and ink my audience will pick up, rightly, on the mental disconnect at work that keeps me from really groking the tool I demo.

It is time to get a little further out in the pond (all this is in ref to instruction, btw), and show folks how to swim, float, paddle, play, move, traverse, in the... uh... water.  While in the water.

judith krug, thankee sai

http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/april2009/oifkrug.cfm

CHICAGO –Judith Fingeret Krug, 69, the long-time director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, who fought censorship on behalf of the nation's libraries, died April 11 after a lengthy illness.

Krug, who often said, "Censorship dies in the light of day," was the director of OIF and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation for more than 40 years.  She was admired and respected for her efforts to guarantee the rights of individuals to express ideas and read the ideas of others without governmental interference...

  

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...
Woody Evans
 http://woodyevans.com/
  Writing & Research for Hire

bird watchers, ah, twitter

http://ibc.lynxeds.com/

A social networking site for bird watchers -- evidence / content driven.  Post vids, pics, comments, news items, and rate the work of others.

This is ground-swell amateur naturalism dosed with octane.  This is what the web is for.  Lovely.

(Thanks Jo!)

patron granulation again, due date chance

This at LISNews (http://lisnews.org/due_date_stamps_thing_past) reminds me of a previous thought (http://ishush.blogspot.com/2008/07/patron-granulation.html)... maybe the very CONCEPT of due dates, or rigid & standard due dates, is kinda not-needed.  A flexible tiered style of 'account types' which gives different due dates, item number allowances, renewal limits, etc. is in order -- Netflix style.

For an additional $5 per month (ontop yr land taxes), get the 'supporter' library card which gives you an extra 10 items and an extra 2 days.

For an additional $10, get all the above, plus you can take up to 10 DVDs out at a time, etc. etc. etc.

...Different account types for different patron needs & styles.

reference is dead, quit yr kvetch

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth

Rather than looking up the answer to your question, Wolfram|Alpha figures out what your question means, looks up the necessary data to answer your question, computes an answer, designs a page to present the answer in a pleasing way, and sends the page back to your computer.

Let me give three random examples.  If you enter the query, “3/26/2009 + 90 days” you’ll get a page that gives a date ninety days later than the first date.   If you enter “mt. everest height length of golden gate” you’ll get a page expressing the height of Mount Everest as a multiple of the length of the Golden Gate Bridge.  If you enter “temperature in los gatos,” you’ll get something like the current temperature, a graph of the temperatures over the last week with projections for the next few days, and a graph of the temperatures over the last year.

Wolfram|Alpha can pop out an answer to pretty much any kind of factual question that you might pose to a scientist, economist, banker, or other kind of expert.  The exciting part is that you’re not just looking up pages on the web, you’re getting new information that’s generated by computations working from the known data.  Wolfram says the response can be so speedy because, “We’ve found that, of all the things science can compute, most take a second or less.”

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Librarians, this means it is now way way way past time you stop thinking about your profession in terms of what you have done at the reference desk, unless what you have done at the reference desk is get up and out from behind that reference desk and teach people how to find and evaluate information.

The game for librarians from here on out: teaching humans how to find and evaluate information.  Not delivering or gatekeeping information to humans (machines do that).

Bury the reference desk.

institute for the future, library

http://www.iftf.org/library

ABOUT THE LIBRARY

The Institute for the Future is pleased to offer the following reports to the public at no cost. A PDF of the report can be downloaded by clicking on the title through to the individual report. Please note that most of our recent reports are proprietary to our members. If you have a question about a particular report or our membership programs, please send your inquiry to info@iftf.org.

To purchase color printed copies of our public maps download the order form and fax the completed form to Kim Lawrence, 650-854-7850.

lankes libraries

http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/intro.php

band names 9

I make up band names and post them here.  You can use them if you want.

The Badassettes.

work is wot?

Yeah, so I don't write about work -- not directly.  Reading through all these here archives, you'll find none never no direct mention of where I spend my ten a day.  Alright.  Obliquely, maybe, you could reckon on out sudoku-like... but it don't matter.  What matters is: work is getting interesting again.  Work is getting able, agile, smart.  Work is getting will, and work is getting vision.  Suddenly the future has enablers who are oiled (if not well-oiled yet), and ready to flex horsepower for a set of taxpayers who need to know.

Ahhh, yes.  Ah, yes.

liblog landscape listing

Here Ishush got itself listed in Walt Crawford's Liblog Landscape for ought-seven through ought-eight:

creativity in libraries, 3

All this is about 'creativity in learning in libraries', really.

But we've got some handicaps, from the start.

Library systems aren't built for wandering; libraries happen to be brilliant places to wander and bumble and bump into unexpected things -- but the systems of organization were not designed for wandering.  They were designed to minimize the need for wandering.  They were designed to move seeker to sought with zero wander betwixt seeking and finding.

Now our digital aides (and content) have inherited this interest in decrease wander.  Catalogs online, databases, these are built on the notion that the seeker knows what he's seeking.  Sure.  Helping people get to the info is the goal.  Libraries (well, good libraries) aren't antagonistic to wandering -- but if they were designed for it, there'd be no classificatory systems at all.  So.

We've got a heritage of 'get to business' here.  That's useful.  How, now, do we introduce the elements necessary to make folks feel like they can turn up and bumble without getting barked at by a crab (old, punk, or other)?  Mixed metaphor there, but.

You know -- welcome to the library, come in, ask questions if you want -- we don't care if you put the book down in the wrong place.  We don't care if you fall asleep reading.  We don't care if you write on the tables. (crabs note: these are simplified ex. of shift in attitude, not suggestions for policy.  and they're questions.  they're wonders.)  I wonder -- there's a 58 year old HVAC repairman in looking up info on 9/11 because his damn cousin was rattling off a bunch of hockey she heard on the Alex Jones show, and he wants to get some newspaper articles to prove her wrong... I wonder how to make a space that visibly and immediatley demonstrates it's okay to sit down and start TRYING THINGS OUT b/c he's not going to BREAK ANYTHING.

--

and then: how to bring such ambient cues to the direct and pointed activities of bibliographic instruction...

creativity in libraries, 2

It's more complicated, of course: here we got a slew of 19 year olds who want more than anything to get the girl or get the guy, to be cool, be tough, be famous.  God bless them.  Making mistakes in front of others, helpful though it might be ultimately in making them more confident learners -- that ain't high on anybody's list.

And the 'making of mistakes' is predicate -- it ain't what we or they will be trying for.  It will happen (and it's inevitable, it will happen) before things get learnt.  B4 they get learnt at all.  Because it's in the making of the mistakes (which comes after "trying things out" you know "to see if it will work or not") that we learn stuff.

I like what Robinson's on about -- it's not that some folks are 'more creative' than others, it's that some folks stifle it as a trade off.  You can look mighty foolish going around being creative about stuff.  You can fail.  That can sting.

So how we create a culture of 'softer blows' in the classroom, where the sting ain't so mean?  How to make a library classroom with padded walls? Haha.

creativity in libraries

Ken Robinson's TED talk on creativity in education -- his main point being that creativity ought to be encouraged and valued as much as literacy in our schools -- has got me thinking how I can bring student/patron creativity to our library literacy sessions.  Again.  

I've made an important shift in my bibliographical instructionating in the last year.  Used to be (and this is mainly what I inherited when I joined the library subculture at the particular place I work -- though it's got roots in Air Force culture too) I did more of a 'presentation' style -- here is the database location, here is the search interface, here are the limiters, here is the syntax, here is a sample article, here is how you print it, here is how you e-mail it, et.c.  The shift has been towards more student participation and involvement in 'the presentation' -- I have always been open to questions during the instruction, but the 'shift' has made the whole affair more Q&A than Speech.  My instruction sessions are, like, 30% presentation, now, and 70% hands-on and questions.  I kinda knew there were multiple learning styles, but it's only in the last 3 years that I've seen this clearly enough in action to start changing my own actions in the instruction sessions.

So.  Taking it further, how to encourage the 'mistakes and gaffes' necessary for real understanding within the alotted hour?

A shift to 20% presentation, 80% hands-on?  A purely (annoyingly) Socratic approach?  More 'treasure hunt' and 'activities' and 'games' built-in?

Small teams working to find things, then presenting what they found to the whole class seems to be a really workable and useful format -- it lets the performers perform, the shy ones receed and watch, the leaders lead, and they're all on the spot and they all have something at stake because they know they've got to stand before the class and prof and librarian.  That tends to keen up the mind.

Classes will begin to roll into our library within 3 weeks.  I want to keep an open mind, and watch for what works.

Anyway, watch this:

10 writing tips

Interesting take on "how to be a writer" from Writingforhire.blogspot.com:

http://writingforhire.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-write-for-cash-generalities.html

Tips 1-3:

1. Get a job and keep it.  This "job" won't be writing, probably; it'll be counting things or working a register or mulching pear trees or sweeping floors in bowling alleys or delivering pizzas or teaching 6th graders or working in a snotty atheletic shop or cutting meat at Whole Foods or something.  Keep this job: it's the job that pays rent or mortgage, bills, you know.

2. Write.

3. Submit your work.

woodyevans.com

Moving my main blogging interests back to my own site for a while.

[Point of clarification -- my main writing work blog is woodyevans.com.  My thoughts on libraries, searching, & info-sci will mostly constellate around here and ghostfooting; plenty cross-over will happen, as always :]

STAR-TIDES makes WIRED

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/fast-cheap-and.html

Lots of folks working hard on various parts and pieces of this for years now.

Syncrety. 

And, yes, we could still use librarians on this to do KM work and metadata for documents...

Vinay's Briefing in Reykjavik

Six Ways To Die - Hexayurt Project briefing, Reykjavik, 17/9/2008 from Hexayurt on Vimeo.