Monthly Archives: September 2007

creating a flat library and the culture of maybe

The North Plains Public Library is in a fairly uncommon stage of growth. I don’t have any figures but I bet there aren’t too many public libraries that are just a few years old and have a one year old building. We’re the most recently added member of the Washington County Cooperative Library [...]

haunted library

The Thomas Ford Memorial Library’s YA department is hosting a haunted house. Nice idea!

Let’s just hope they don’t get in trouble for promoting witchcraft or somesuch.

quick and dirty webpage creation

There are a slew of very low barrier to entry webpage creation tools, one even claiming to be a Simple Content Management System. As if blogging weren’t easy enough, here are a few tools that are quick and dirty but might come in handy.
Displaying text on the web doesn’t get [...]

material type = reference, not holdable

Could your library benefit from an attention getting stunt? A copy of the Magna Carta is going to auction. It might be a neat document for you to have in your collection, but you’ll likely need to hit up your Friends of the Library group. Sotheby’s estimates that it will go for [...]

nintendo DS service stations

You all are playing around with the Nintendo DS, right? The awesome handheld gaming system that features titles such as (my favs) Brain Age, Cooking Mama, Trauma Unit, and the game that’s practically an interactive eBook – Hotel Dusk? It really is great device, and is, like the Nintendo Wii, fairly multi-generational. [...]

libraries and IM featured in the chicago tribune

Evanston Public Library’s new IM availability gets a nice plug in the Chicago Trib. The article does a nice job highlighting the fact that some libraries are attempting to remain relevant by adopting the preferred tools of their users.
I’m quoted in the article in a few places, and despite the slightly negative tone I [...]

global public library usage statistics

Via Worldmapper, a “collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.”
The most books borrowed were in the Russian Federation. There were high rates of borrowing in Western Europe, Japan and Eastern Europe. In these regions most territories reported some book borrowing.
In other regions reported [...]

Tapping the Tools of Teen Culture in the LMC

I wrote an article for the September edition of Multimedia & Internet@Schools Magazine and I think it is a solid introduction to how Media Specialists can use weblogs, flickr, wikis, and instant messaging. There’s also a bit about dealing with resistance from administration.
Here’s the intro to the article which is available online:
While our students [...]

yet another test

The nice folks at SLC want to see what blogging looks like.
I’ll even add in a video. How about Lindrider!