I was thrilled today to join the admirable ranks of Jessamyn and Andrea to offer a Web 2.0 smorgasbord to NH librarians.
My Web 2.SO? or Why Libraries Should Care, repurposed from BIGWIG, served as the day’s introduction. Jessamyn then offered a practical introduction to Flickr and del.icio.us. She even inspired me to [...]

There’s little doubt that historically libraries have enjoyed a place of pride in their communities but is that the same as being important in the daily lives of our users? If we’d done a good job when they had to come to us, won some loyalty, added some value, it seems to me they [...]

I just finished up giving a presentation to our staff about the practical uses of rss. Returning to my desk I encounter this on Walsh’s flickr stream:

The comments include this, from Han N.:
Those colors are amazing! Did you know that an octopus can make itself like a coconut as a defense mechanism? I always thought [...]

This week the lucky children of Madison made snowglobes as a Summer Reading Program activity. But not just any snow globe, oh no, a snowglobe to showcase our beloved Madison Boulder. Civic pride swells.

They used crushed egg shells to make the snow! What a terrifically fun idea!

The issue of restricting or regulating access to library content is not a new one. But Brian’s recent experience has put it on my mind again:
The mother was angry that her child could have checked out such a movie, and didn’t understand why the library wasn’t enforcing the MPAA movie ratings.
For some reason the [...]

YAY for libraries in the mainstream! This cam across my LifeHacker feed today.:
CNET reports that the best place to get free books, music, movies and photos isn’t BitTorrent - it’s your public library.
thanks to CNet.
Gary Price knows what’s up:
The bottom line is people can’t use what they don’t know about. It’s not just search. [...]

Tamworth is a town of 2500 in the rural white mountains of NH. Yet, TheGoodPeasant, tamworth resident, took a video of the Cook Library’s 4th of July float and posted it on YouTube.
It’s not just kids or geeks. People in all types of places are using social tools online and they’re doing so [...]

This topic has been percolating for a long time, so I was psyched when Michelle contacted me with an invitation to participate in the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase. (Blogs, Wikis, Social Software Interest Group = BEST library acronym to date.) The idea, as I understand it, is to get some folks to produce some [...]

I was sorry to miss the NELA-ITS workshop on Open Source Software last week. But, thanks to the wonders of the internets, I did get some of the content. Particularly fascinating to me was Randy Robertshaw’s presentation on using open source software solutions on all library computers. Now, I’ve long thought this [...]

No one has ever accused my blog of being too cute, but I did return from Istanbul and filled out my family a bit.
The contrast, though, of visiting a place as strictly observer - even more pronounced by not speaking a word of Turkish - and then fully integrating a pair of babies into my [...]