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- Useful tech links from American Libraries
- Talking about expected library technology competencies
- Viva faceted catalogs and discovery layers!
- A competency of change?
- Digitize your library on the cheap
- More Recent Articles
- Search Neal-Schuman Library Technology Companion
The "Technology News" section of the November 2009 American Libraries offers the following five links that look interesting and potentially useful:
Web Work 101: Be Your Own Tech Support - a list of 10 ways to troubleshoot basic computer problems in a post to WebWorkerDaily.
7 Steps to Make Computers Accessible for the Elderly - a blog post from MakeUseOf that offers techniques to adapt Windows to make using a computer easier for folks "of a certain age."
300+ Resources to Help You Become a WordPress Expert - a post from WebDesigner Depot that offers many (and I mean many) resources for working with the WordPress blogging platform.
The Top 10 Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology - Ten great pieces of advice from Roy Tennant (who knows a thing or two about technology in libraries) for library administrators who may have qualms about innovating with or implementing technology.
6 Ways We Gave Up Our Privacy - Post from CSO Online noting that by sharing pieces of ourselves through social networking, Google, GPS', the Kindle, RFID tags, and the Patriot Act, we have lost privacy in large part. How to get it back? Read the post, for starters.
I had a nice opportunity recently to talk about my findings on expected technology competencies in libraries and how we can (corporately and individually) grow our skills.
I gave a Technology Spotlight presentation at the Academic Library Association of Ohio's Annual Conference in Wilmington, OH on October 30. You can see my presentation and handout here.
I then spoke at the Michigan Library Association's Annual Conference in Lansing, MI on November 4. The presentation and handouts are here. That was a great trip for me, in part because it gave me an opportunity to visit my old stomping grounds as an undergraduate at Michigan State University.
Both presentations were entitled "Are You Ready to Roll?: Expected Technology Competencies and the Library Worker." That is the key question for all of us with technology, I suppose: are we ready to roll? Are we ready to take on the challenges that come with working in libraries today? We all come into our jobs with skills and abilities and knowledge in various related and not-exactly-related areas. Can we find ways to keep track of new developments and to add to our skills as we go? I think we can, and that combining a personal assessment like the survey I did last year (and many other options out there) with some goals to grow our knowledge can get us on the right track. I hope these presentations may be of some help to you as you look at your technology skills and desires for professional growth.
I should also include in here a presentation I did back in August on similar ground for the Ohio Library Support Staff Institute.
Keep learning, keep succeeding!
After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education
This story from the Chronicle of Higher Ed is a good introduction to a) alternate search interfaces for library materials, and b) ways to bring together and search the complex collections of digital and physical resources that libraries provide. Chapter 6 in my book offers more details. There are a variety of commercial and open-source products available, including the one we have at Miami University.
explodedlibrary bunker: Librarian 2.0: the most adaptable to change? by Helen Partridge, Queensland University of Technology - this blog post makes an interesting suggestion about needed competencies for library staff today: the ability for constant change. Based on the results of my survey and a lot of commentary, resistance to change does block a lot of technology development in libraries (often resistance for its own sake rather than constructive, careful consideration of new technologies - aimed at avoiding big jumps being made for no good purpose). What do you think?
I came across this site (DIY High-Speed Book Scanner from Trash and Cheap Cameras) in an article on Slate and it really struck me. I'm not a great do-it-yourself-er, but what if libraries created these, and scanned stuff, and made it available for free and . . .
Wake up! Well, of course it's not legal (for materials still under copyright), but this is an interesting application of re-using old technologies (environmentally sound!) to convert materials from print to digital. I'm not saying that the e-book trumps the printed book, either, but there are some very intriguing convergences here.
Please do not try this at work. But at home . . . 8-)
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