I shared the discussion Shimon and I are having about libraries with Kevin, a public librarian. Below are Kevin’s responses to a few of Shimon’s points, posted with his permission. Kevin’s words are in italics per his formatting.
a number of small, reservable, soundproofed conference rooms with chalkboards and internet access so that 2 to 4 [...]
According to this brief San Jose Mercury News article, Microsoft’s NewsJunkie moves new news stories to the top of the list and news stories with repetitive content to the bottom so the user doesn’t keep sorting through the same material.
Seen on ResourceShelf
Library student Cynthia Wilson is looking for all kinds of librarians to photograph to show the variety of people working in our profession as a way to counter the stereotypes. Her contact information is on the site I am a librarian.
Spotted on LIS News
Back in early February, I wrote about Shimon’s scheme of commenting on a Frassle blog starting a new blog in Frassle. Well, he has rethought how Frassle does comments and plans to revamp the system. I think his new plan for the system is probably a good idea. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed to [...]
Shimon builds on Cesar Brea’s post about shareable calendars and RSS feeds. Though they both focus on the social application of calendars, using RSS and Event Share Framework (EFS), it has applications in other areas, too. Journalists, for example, often have to deal with calendars. Imagine a government reporter getting the mayor’s calendar of public [...]
“That librarian looks like she just walked out of a Norman Rockwell painting showing a librarian.”
While some of you would gasp at this description in horror, I can only wonder what American painter Norman Rockwell’s concept of a librarian would be. I can’t remember any artwork I’ve seen attributed to him specifically depicting a librarian.
Congratulations to the four amazing people who won the Special Libraries Association News Division awards this year. John Cronin of the Boston Herald will get kwapilled at the Awards Banquet in June. The Kwapil Award is the division’s highest honor, recognizing someone who has made outstanding contributions to the News Division and the field during [...]
The ResourceShelf points to this video presentation about rethinking reference services hosted by OCLC. It sounds interesting, especially since someone from 24/7 Reference, a type of virtual reference service, is on the panel, but I can’t get it to work on my computer. I’m not sure what kind of software it requires that I don’t [...]
A week ago, Shimon shared some thoughts on what qualities his ideal library might have. I finished a response to his post last night. …
Addendum 3/24: I hope Shimon doesn’t think he’s getting off this easily. Hey Shimon, what do you think about my response? Anyone else want to chime in–>make this a discussion/conversation instead [...]
Yeah, yeah, yeah Google’s great, whatever. I think some of the things their competitors are doing are much more interesting, more key to the future of search. How about being able to search the content of your e-mails and other files, not just file names (like the new Lycos toolbar described on the ResourceShelf)? A [...]