Archive for March, 2007
Kevin Driedger of the Library of Michigan has started a new blog for Michigan librarians: Library Preservation. To add this blog to your RSS reader, right-click here and copy to paste into your RSS reader. [For more information on RSS, see MLC's RSS web page.]
This new blog promises not to be boring! In his latest blog post, “How not to preserve family treasures,” Kevin cites one of my most favorite authoritative sources, The Simpsons. Looks like a winning combination to me!
MLC’s fledgling wiki includes pages for Michigan Collections & Digitization where we’ve linked to Kevin’s new blog. We encourage Michigan librarians to add information to these wiki pages about your libraries’ special collections, digitization projects, and preservation efforts.
March 27th, 2007
The Michigan Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee is offering a workshop on Friday, April 27, Street Legal for Patron Record Privacy. To register, use MLA’s online workshop form.
Lawyers at the workshop will cover library privacy laws and court cases and will discuss the policies, procedures, and staff training needed to comply with those laws, including presentations on:
-the revised USA Patriot Act
-Children’s Internet Protection Act
-Michigan Library Privacy Act
-Electronic Communications Privacy Act and more
The panel of presenters includes:
-Lance Werner, Library of Michigan
-Nicholas L. Bozen, HAL,
-Patrick Corbett, Cooley Law School
-Anne Seurynck, Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, P.C.
-Richard W. Butler, Law, Weathers & Richardson
-Laurie Kelly, Law, Weathers & Richardson
It sounds like a great program! And definitely timely!
March 27th, 2007
Judy Hauser, information media consultant for Oakland Schools in Waterford, Michigan, has an article published in the February 2007 issue of Computers in Libraries.
Click here to connect to the MeL Databases link to Judy’s cover story article, “Media specialists can learn Web 2.0 tools to make school more cool; using Web 2.0 tools can make work more fun for adults and learning more interesting for students,” Computers in Libraries 27.2 (Feb 2007): p6(5).
Yay – way to go, Judy!!!!
March 27th, 2007
There is a great blog post on Creating Passionate Users titled “Face-to-face trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Videos.” Kathy Sierra asks – why are we still going to conferences when we now have social networking technology to allow us to meet online?
She writes, “The point is, face-to-face still matters. And in fact all our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable. Thanks to the tools y’all are building, we now have more far-flung friends–including people we’ve never met f2f–than ever before. We now have more people we want to connect with in the human world, often after years of electronic-only contact.” … “Bottom line: Face-to-Face matters, and the more people we meet online, the more people we now want to connect with offline.”
She also notes that the most underrated benefit of face-to-face conferences is INSPIRATION. I agree. Even though I really like being able to use email, IM and other online tools to cut down the number of meetings I have to attend, there is something envigorating about attending a conference that you don’t get from online meetings. I frequently come back from conferences motivated to start new projects or try new methods. Sometimes the inspiration comes from the programs and sometimes from talking with other attendees between programs.
Next month I’m going to Ball State University’s annual copyright conference in Indiana. I usually keep up-to-date on copyright law through reading blogs, web posts, and case law, but when I read about copyright, it rarely inspires or motivates me! The Ball State conference, on the other hand, is inspiring because there are 100 other people in the room who are, if not “passionate” about copyright law, at least interested in learning more and talking about where the law is going and its effect on libraries and education.
All that being said, I’m still in favor of investigating new avenues for online meetings and training. It would be great if we had the time and money to travel for all of our training and meeting needs, but that isn’t feasible with our libraries’ budgets and time constraints. In her post Kathy writes, “Perhaps one day in the future, the technology will finally catch up with real-life and we’ll get the same brain/health benefits from a non-real-world experience.”
Maybe Second Life, or a similar tool, will be able to fill that need for some library meetings and training in the future? But even if it does, I hope we’ll still be getting together for face-to-face conferences.
March 16th, 2007
Today’s cover story in the Lansing State Journal features various Michigan ventures in Second Life, including MLC’s presence in Second Life.
The main focus of the story, Bev and David Lang of LTS Video, are old friends of Michigan libraries. They produced the video, “Establishing a District Library,†for the Library of Michigan in 1990 and the promotional video, “AccessMichigan: the Michigan Electronic Library,†in 1998. You can view their “virtual world†movies by Machinima on the website, http://www.silverandgoldie.com
Last fall, Evette Atkin of MLC conducted several free “Intro to Second Life†online seminars, and she will be offering additional sessions in April and May (to be added to our workshop calendar and registration system later this month). Also, once Evette has completed construction of MLC’s new virtual building in Second Life later this spring, MLC will host a Grand Opening party. Thanks, Evette, for all your hard work to make MLC’s presence in Second Life a (virtual) reality!
March 8th, 2007
Anne K. Beaubien, Director and Cooperative Access Services and Grants Officer, University Library, University of Michigan, is the 2007 Virginia Boucher-OCLC Distinguished Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Librarian Award recipient. The award recognizes and honors a librarian for outstanding professional achievement, leadership and contributions to ILL and document delivery.
For the complete story, see ALA Press Release.
Congratulations Anne!
March 8th, 2007
Last week, Michael Stephens posted Ten Tech Trends for Librarians 2007 on his blog, Tame the Web. His advice:
Learn to Learn
Adapt to Change
Scan the Horizon
His post states,
“As we carry out our essential mission of service, stewardship and access, I really want folks in libraries to be able to watch the horizon for trends — and I told the group that in Toronto: ‘We can all be trendspotters. We can all watch for trends that impact not only the profession but our specific communities and user groups.’ Please ponder these and let me know what you think.â€
His Tech Trends list includes discussion of:
Conversations
People want to talk to each other
Convergence
Content
Redefining LIS jobs
Citizen Journalism
We’re Human
Openness and Sharing
Participation
Experience and Play
There is a lot of thought-provoking discussion here. I especially like the questions he raises about community in the We’re Human discussion:
“Librarians should be very aware of what fosters community. What makes a community pull together? What creates human connections online? We can blather on about technologies and tools until we’re blue in the collective, conference-attending, presentation-giving face, but the key is to use the social networking tools to foster support, connection and FEELINGs.â€
For the complete blog post, click here.
March 5th, 2007
