Michael is conducting a survey of librarians and IM. It took me all of two minutes to complete, so if you use IM (or not) for personal, professional, or reference purposes, take a couple of minutes to fill out the survey. He's "interested to see how many librarians are using IM at their... Continue Reading →
Marketing Virtual Reference
This is one way to get students to use your IM/Chat reference service. From the University of Mississippi Libraries: Chat with a Librarian and Win an iPod Shuffle! During the month of February every student or faculty/staff member who chats with a librarian will automatically be entered to win an iPod Shuffle. You don't have... Continue Reading →
RSS is Spreading
RSS feeds are popping up all over the place. At our university, there is a feed for hot news, one for top news stories, and even the athletics department has a news feed. All the feeds are linked from the "RSS at Ohio University" page. I'm very proud to say that our Library News feed... Continue Reading →
Tweaking our Podcast Tour
Greg contacted me via IM last week, and the conversation with him helped me to flesh out some ideas for the podcast tours. He writes that a podcast isn't really a podcast without an RSS feed, which I happen to agree with. One of the things that were lacking on the podcast tour page was... Continue Reading →
A First Try at Podcasting
On January 5, our library launched a podcast version of the library self-guided tour. This is the first publishable draft of the podcast, and we're continuing to get feedback that we're incorporating into later versions. It's a little too early to tell how successful the tour will be, but I can tell you that the... Continue Reading →
Stupid In America
Last night, ABC's 20/20 aired a story called Stupid in America, which looked at the failings of our public education system. I watched it out of the corner of my eye while finishing a novel, so I can't really argue much about the points of the program. However, what I did see while turning my... Continue Reading →
Wiki World Presentation
I attended Meredith's Wiki World presentation yesterday, and I must say that it was a good show indeed. She presented information very clearly, and I am sure that all of the 120 attendees learned a great deal about the topic. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the attendees downloaded wiki software immediately following... Continue Reading →
Are you stressed?
According to a study being presented at a society conference in Glasgow, librarians have a very stressful job. Some excerpts from the BBC article: The study surveyed nearly 300 people drawn from five occupations. They were firefighters, police officers, train operators, teachers and librarians and were intended to cover the spectrum, with the librarians first-thought... Continue Reading →
The Place to Be this Thursday
You want to know about wikis? Hear it from the Wiki Woman herself, Meredith Farkas in this OPAL event: Thursday, January 12, 2006 beginning at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 2:00 Central, 1:00 Mountain, noon Pacific, and 8:00 p.m. GMT: Wiki World: An Introduction Wikis are democratizing the World Wide Web in a way that... Continue Reading →