Do you have a list of people you wish would blog about what they’re doing in their libraries? Sue Polenka, Head of Reference at Wright State University’s Paul Laurence Dunbar Library was on my such list. She emailed to tell me I can erase her name. She’s started a blog called No Shelf Required. She calls it a “moderated discussion of the issues surrounding eBooks, for librarians and publishers.”

I hope that Sue fills us in on the eBook scene at her library because I understand that she’s transformed their reference collection and increased library usage. I also wouldn’t mind if she got a bit off topic and told us about how the library has been called a “hero” by students because of their gaming events. And they’re way into IM. Yay.

Thanks, Sue!

Scott Jeffries, Reference Librarian at Dallas Baptist University writes,

For four afternoons in November, the Dallas Baptist University Vance Memorial Library hosted their Are You As Smart As A Freshman? event. Patterned after the popular game show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, this event had 2nd-4th year students competing for prizes by answering questions that university freshman should be familiar with. They were able to use a panel of Freshmen as part of their “lifelines” as well as one of the library’s reference librarians …The intent of the event was to raise awareness of the library and its resources and to offer a fun outlet for students within the library’s facilities.

Gaming in libraries does not just mean video/computer games! Nice work!

In my presentations I like to say that people using social software sites like to do library type work for fun. LibraryThing might be the most glaring example of this, but there’s also AskMe. And there’s organizing and adding metadata on del.icio.ius and flickr.

Speaking of flickr, I’ve now another example. There’s a group called ID Please in which members post all sorts of insects, plants and animals for others to identify. Birders I know might like it.

I’d love to see a report on the accuracy and speed of things identified by the ID Please group and Reference Librarians. Fair comparison? Who would you bet on?