How to use this Page

[...] few late summer links [web link]librarian.net (26/Aug/2009)“…people have advice bernie margolis now the state [...]

Anytime you want to write an article for us (ITLwtLP), let us know. We’d love to have you.

Nike AIR Force

Air Max

Thanks, Jessamyn. There will be copies at the Greenwood/Libraries Unlimited display. I will there occasionally, but mostly I will be out and about, blogging for PLABlog. Will we see you at ALA this year?

Thanks for sharing this - it seems to me (being a student in library school) that this should be a service that is offered to patrons in libraries now. I can’t begin to count the times that I have heard people generally unfamiliar with the internet say, “I wish I had a facebook so I could keep in contact with my kids.” Of course, this could be from someone who is totally unfamiliar with the internet, or someone who is fairly proficient - but has reservations about the content/networking features of facebook. If libraries are going to offer this type of service, they really need to meet their patrons where they are - tailor classes to more and less experienced internet users, and try to avoid the blanket (trying to offer one thing for everyone in a class) approach I see often.

this is a great piece. thank you for posting about it. i do think it misses one detail w/r/t the couple who became irritated with each other as the gentleman half tried to log into their gmail account.

could the gentleman type?

can we remember what it was like when *we* couldn’t type?

i had a math class in junior high back in the 70’s where we wrote 10 lines of basic, and then had 10 minutes each on the teletype terminal in a closet off of our classroom. my school did a (spendy!) timeshare on a mainframe computer that resided in a downtown office building. guess what the quality was of our experience, we 7th graders, with our 10 minutes? *none of us could type*. it took *forever* to type in our little 10 lines of code — and it had to be exactly correct or it wouldn’t run. some of us never even finished typing the code.

anyway. point being, the keyboarding aspect of anything computer-related is a *huge* source of frustration for anyone who lacks keyboarding skills. my father-in-law became so frustrated that he ultimately spent most of his online time browsing — clicking to navigate sites that interested him — because the need to type was reduced. my mother-in-law just dumbed down entirely, and used the computer very little, because as a retired secretary she could type like the very wind; a formerly ‘menial’ skill (she had been my father-in-law’s secretary at one point) that suddenly made my father-in-law feel stupid. when both of them tried to learn computer skills simultaneously.. well, it had a really bad effect on the dynamics of their relationship.

so i would suggest also considering orientation to the user-interface of a solid learn-to-type program. it can be done in private, and i know the old ‘mavis beacon’ program was a lot like a video game. my dad thought it was fun, and used it just to test himself, even though he could already type.

Thanks for posting the link and commentary, Jessamyn! I have done a lot of helping colleagues at university over the last couple of years (I’m a newly minted Library Tech), explaining things like why clicking the ‘Home’ tab in MSWord won’t bring up Google. There is a heck of a lot of fear holding back most of the people I’ve encountered who are having the hardest of times. Helping folks have positive (or at least, non-scary) experiences is the best thing I’ve found for it.

If anyone has any other links to share of a similar vein, or other suggested reading, please post up or email me at tamahoc/gmail.com.

Great article, I do believe that we need to start being more proactive in these matters. all it takes is a little bit of patience and willingness to help them become sufficient.
new york car insurance

[...] ways to help new computer users   Leave a Comment [...]

Oooh, love library/book nostalgia. I found a picture of a rotating book reader. funny. I have a link to the Hot Rod Librarian on Blogger (http://miamidiaries.blogspot.com). You’ll find nice Vargas girl-type librarian pin-ups. So bold! Just how we like it in Miami…

It is difficult for me to express the joy that this site brought to my heart. Thank you ever so much!

These will be great sources to insert for my book lists each month. Thanks.

That’s weird you posted this- Last night I found this amazing set of images on Flickr from Pratt Libraries

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34900073@N07/sets/72157613160345964/

Oh, but he was done in with a book. By someone really clever who read a book.

[...] in the library with the BOOK [...]

This reminds me of a Minneapolis politician’s remarks on library and police funding. “Samuels, referring to his library vote, said, “When you are a person on the other end of a gun . . . the only use for a book is to throw it at them or block a bullet with it.”” http://is.gd/N9cq

The Walker is really cool. You should visit it the next time you are in Minneapolis. It is not far from downtown, and has an incredible outdoor sculpture garden (free) next door. I saw the Frida Kahlo exhibit there. That exhibit was awesome!

Oh, I love it! Confer an honorary M.L.I.S. on the guy.

I wonder if this kid’s school is practicing a little reverse psychology. You know, a lot of these titles are books kids would never willingly read & would complain mightily about if told they had to read them. Tell them they can’t, however, and they all want to read every word of every banned book, not even realizing many of them are the type of books other kids HAVE to read in school. Whatever, they’re reading & excited about it.

I can’t shake the feeling that this is a hoax. That list is such a mish-mash of much-loved classics and much-loved modern classics, it almost seems tailored to spark outrage among the masses. Yes, the author says this is just a “partial” list, but…The Canterbury Tales? Seriously? Yes, it’s racy - assuming, in this case, your average high school student can understand more than the occasional word of it without someone to teach them.

What kind of school is this supposed to be? They’re banning the Qur’an? I just don’t see it, even at a Catholic school. And in case anyone’s forgotten, Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” does not glorify the titular characters. Finally, for someone who apparently spends so much time nose-deep in novels, this person sure can’t spell.

If it is a joke, it would be a pretty pointless one, but it’s not like there’s any lack of bored, petty, amateur hoax-ters on the web.

I agree this has got to be a hoax. Sounds like someones idea of a librarians wet dream. Someone is shopping around for opinions on a brilliant idea for a YA novel.

Don’t let Michael Gorman find out; he’s not big on that sort of things.

wow what an interesting discussion. at the same time, it does not seem like it could be real but yet it appears to be. sometimes I wonder what school’s are thinking when they do this kind of thing? Especially since as many people pointed out with their answers, many of them are considered classics and popular reading list books at many other schools. time for some people to get their heads out of the clouds.

It appeals to the optimist in me to hope that this is a true story.

At the same time I must admit the list of banned books are rather mixed, and I find it hard to believe any school could ban the Quran without bringing some pretty heavy retaliation on themsevles. Plus the asker’s profile says they’re an aspiring writer, could support Erik’s theory.

This is a hoax. Perhaps a review of the skeptical comments from the BoingBoing discussion of this story would help.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/24/kid-keeping-a-lendin.html

I’ll reiterate my comment from there:

“…I don’t know how anyone with internet access these days doesn’t start with the basic assumption that everything they read is false until proven otherwise and with multiple sources. Kind of a wikipedia approach to everything.”

That Richard is a brilliant comment. Everyone just wants this to be true in the worst way.

Whether or not it’s true (and yes, I’m skeptical), I’m not sure I would recommend that a kid keep an entire library of his/her own books on private school property if they are explicitly banned. I’d probably tell the kid to keep them at home and run the library from his or her house with multiple drop-off/exchange options. While I’m certain a private school can say they don’t want students reading certain books, if the students are doing it off campus I doubt many parents will truly support any school actions taken to discipline their children for reading a book.

[...] it OK to run an illegal library from my locker…" [web link]librarian.net (23/May/2009)“…illegal library from my locker at school a [...]

Take a look at this users other Yahoo! questions. It’s a hoax.

Yeah I’m totally getting that “hoax” feeling too, too bad.

It may not be true, but it’s still a great, inspiring story.

why librarians won’t weed the junk from circulating collections

Perhaps because of the endless parade of TV news stories framed as “Local librarians are throwing your tax dollars straight into the trash! Shocking details tonight after Idol.” if they do any weeding.

I can’t speak to the reason why…but I can speak to the fact that unwillingness to weed is a problem in more libraries than not.  I have to fight to get ugly, out-of-date books out of circulation.  Books about “modern France” copyright 1960; children’s books about how to run an Apple 2e; government reports on crime for years in the 70s and 80s.  Yes, these books do occasionally get checked out.  However, I sure hope nobody is using the information for anything other than reminiscing about the good old days!Our children’s librarian seems to be very fearful that there will not be enough books for the shelves.  Just the opposite is true.  The shelves are overflowing with out-of-date information and fiction books that haven’t been checked out for six years or more.  Just get rid of it!

hi i would like to know more about what u’ve just expressed through the title and brief information enclosed therewith. And it will be highly appreciated if you can somehow help me in my research project which deals with christianity, paganism, myth, and folklore of ireland.

thanking you in anticipation.
Regards
ruchika singh, research scholar
the aligarh muslim university, aligarh, India.
e-mail: [email protected]

I could start a whole other blog for an academic library just with the stuff we have here in our outdated (I am talking decades here) collection. And it is not for lack of weeding. We did do a major weed, and we still have stuff from anywhere between the 1800s to the 1950s. I wish I was making this up. The problem? An administration that pretty much questions the need for books. Same admin. who fund the library adequately (we do not have an actual book budget. We buy monographs if and when any money is left over at end of year). I could go on, but in the end, I just want to say it is not about not being willing to weed.

And I know this is a professional blog, but I do have to remain pseudonymous. I don’t think MPOW would appreciate me mentioning their “unmentionables.”

Sorry, typo: I meant inadequate library funding above.

Some possible reasons, collected after a huge scandalous discussion in Hungary on the powdered circulating collection which is measured 50% in a recent survey:
- fear from facing the real use / quality of collection (may decrease the lobby-power)
- irrational amount of buerocracy of weeding
- books are good “hard” stuff aiming to demonstrate self-importance, space requirements etc. (to visualise the same with information and social services is more difficult)
- the reference work of librarians often still bases on paper sources
- out of date ideas on libra(=book)-ries among users, maintenance and librarians
- ???.

One of my favorite titles that I helped weed from several libraries over my years at DOL: “The Kaiser as I Know Him”

[...] [via librarian.net] Hinterlasse einen Kommentar [...]

And don’t forget the Friends of the Library who spot a weeded book on its way to the Book Sale and wonder why the Library is getting rid of such great literature…

@Marianne: Hey, that’s a primary source! Every secondary student in Minnesota is supposed to do a History Day project,so primary sources are like gold:

http://www.nhd.org/PrimarySourceMaterial.htm

The ones on the blog are pretty bad, though.

Best collection development advice I ever got: if you’re going to weed a collection, do it after midnight on a moonless night.

True story: I used to work at a university music library. One day I had a cart full of unwanted books and LP records (weeded stuff and rejected gifts) and stupidly decided to throw it out in broad daylight. As I pushed the cart the toward the dumpster, a small crowd gathered around and all hell broke loose. “OMG OMG OMG!!! YOU’RE THROWING AWAY PRICELESS LIBRARY MATERIALS!!! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!!” On an impulse, I stepped away from the cart and invited the crowd to take whatever they wanted. This violated library and university policy, and probably state law too. The group eagerly circled the cart and began greedily rifling through its contents. After a few minutes, they gradually stopped and walked away. Nobody took a single item. I was then able to toss them into the dumpster undisturbed.

@nemo: I don’t know how many discarded books I’ve had to hide from our volunteers because I know I’ll never hear the end of it if they see what treasures I’m weeding.
Plus the patrons who dig through the dumpster at night only to bring ancient, stained computer books to the front desk in an attempt to shame us for wasting the taxpayer’s money.

[...] below) to head on over and view the other awesomely bad selections. Thanks to the outstanding blog librarian.net for the [...]

Our Friends of the Library dump books if they have not sold in 2 book sales. At one point somebody screeched up and said “where are you taking those books?” Dave said, “to your car–open up the trunk!” You never saw somebody peel away so fast…

This has always been an issue which will keep coming up time & time again.

What we all need to keep in mind is:

- That there is a major difference between a lending or refernce library, and an archive.

- Libraries are not archives.

- That any outdated medical or legal book will provide misinformation.

- Technologies change.

- New editions get published.

- Our thinking changes upon various issues or works of art over years.

- That we constantly discover more and more upon the world about us.

- That a library should be a place which reflects all of the above.

- That libraries are places in which people find books to educate themselves.

&

- Thus library stock should be the best possible in order to achive this end.

If only more libraries were to explain any or all of the above, then we wouldn’t get such a bad press every time that a book is withdrawn from stock.

I think there are librarians who are at fault as well - four days before I left on maternity leave I had a coworker decide to send me her entire video collection. It wasn’t circulating at her branch, while videos go okay at my branch, so she’d send me the entire collection. Regardless of space or quality of material. Because someone, somewhere, might want it.

Mind you, this is a particular librarian team (youth services) who just don’t weed. The only time anyone did, they threw out half of their collection under the impression that the more they chucked the more money they’d get to replace. So now they don’t weed. They buy at least five copies of any book, but they don’t weed. There are issues in junior non-fiction publishing that can make it difficult to replace some material, but if it’s out of date, covered in unmentionable/undefined ick or just bad information it needs to go and we need to find another way to fill the gap.

That DIY guide is eye opening.
Good effort and I wonder why it never cam to my mind !!

I have studied your post and it helps me to promote my paper machine products. I am new in this business so I am still looking for material that can help for my promotions

Heh, love your small library questions. I went into a beautiful small library in the country a while back, next to a local gallery, and the spirit was much the same. It would be a lovely place to work, I think.

[...] has posted (librarian.net) a link to a video that came out of a “Smithsonian 2.0” 2-day conference which is [...]

Great information. I was thinking the precise information is the exact source itself! Great!

[...] librarian.net » Blog Archive » I am terribly jealous of the … [...]

[...] the rest here: librarian.net » Blog Archive » Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? Wikis … Share and [...]

[...] librarian.net » Blog Archive » Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? Wikis … [...]

Thanks for the mention. The session was a pleasure to do (as was OLA to attend). If I was doing something similar, it would be tempting to drop the whole stats section and focus on advice for sensible blogging…maybe enhanced with some success stories.

[...] via Librarian.net [...]

[...] librarian.net » Blog Archive » Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? Wikis … [...]

[...] See more here: librarian.net » Blog Archive » free book on library blogs [...]

I’m as fussy as you are. I will have to download it and take a look at the format. I’ll bet I will find it a little bit annoying as well. lol

If you do (and I would applaud it if you did) can I please get a chance to correct one or two major errors in my chapter on the Norwegian biblioblogosphere? I managed to overlook them both two times, first when I wrote the thing, and then when we did the corrections before publishing. Hurray for fussy librarians:-)

I was a twitter member a month after they have publicly launched but lost interest into it, it is just not my cup of tea.

I appreciate your comments and no-nonsense twitter guidelines…kind of a twitter if/then list. I decided to try twitter at Providence Public Library a month or so ago and it’s been a lot of fun testing it out and learning more about its benefits while learning to steer away from time-wasting…still a lot to learn on both ends. So it’s great to share stuff with library tech-minded people who understand that dichotomy and get feedback, correction, affirmation, ideas…because this type of job can be isolating and the benefits not always recognized, if you know what I mean. And sometimes the benefits do not outweigh the time invested but we’ll never know unless we have the opportunity to test stuff like this out and get feedback from others. So thanks again for the feedback.

I’m with you on c). It’s too overwhelming when people update too much and I have far too much to do during then day than keep up with that many twitters. Thanks, great suggestions here. :-)

ecofont is a go. giving twitter a test drive. best to all.

Hiya… really interested in viewing your version; I can see where you’re coming from with all of those points. Well, maybe except the Romanian point. :) I’ve just had a huge influx of new followers (well, huge for me) which I think are coming from the Twitter Add Pack collection and none of them are librarians or work in the industry so I’m a bit mystified, unless they’re just hoping for an automatic follow back which isn’t going to happen.

You’re spot on when it comes to the number of people you can follow back, and I’m getting drawn towards resources like Twitter Deck which let me follow a lot of people but concentrate on just a few.

I read an article a year or so ago talking about the concept of “ambient intimacy”; that seeing these little bits and pieces of others’ lives make us feel connected even though (arguably) we’re not. I know more about random librarians across the country thanks to Twitter, etc. than I do about a lot of the folks I see every day and I’m OK with that.

I feel like for things like keeping current with the profession, ambient intimacy is fine. I don’t pretend that these people are my friends because we co-twitter, but I do know a little but about what they’re up to. It’s also been useful to me in a sort of lazyweb way to ask questions and crowdsource some things (easier if you have a lot of people following you). I don’t miss it if I’m on vacation for a week but if I’m home and working, it’s part of my info flow.

[...] librarian.net » Blog Archive » two notes about twitter Wie man Twitter für Bibliotheken nutzen kann. Ich kenne immer noch keine Bibliothek als solche, die twittert. Mitarbeiter schon, aber offizieller Twitteraccount von deutschen Bibliotheken - Fehlanzeige bisher. (tags: netbib) [...]

how can you write that post without a clear link to the flicker site

added it, thanks.

I was hoping they’d have good results but this is orders of magnitude better than anything I’d hoped for.

Oh, and I see you’re reading /Zot/. /Understanding Comics/ is very good: both thought-provoking and accessible.

[...] [Via Jessamyn West] [...]

Unfortunately, several days after you posted this, Yahoo laid off the chief architect of the Flickr Commons project.

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5405776/

People always hate to talk about when they are laid off. But as it has become every day’s news headline since Yahoo started it with cutting 1500 of its task force last year, now a need of platform has been in demand where people can express their selves in words how they are feeling about their company, whey the got laid off was that justified or not.
And every thing they want to tell anonymously.And http://www.layoffgossip.com is providing you that platform.

I must agree! This is an excellent example of group blogging done right. I was particularly taken with the fact each post is vetted/edited.

Thanks for the shout out!

[...] librarian.net. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Free library-related eLearning sites (library [...]

That… Well, it seems like a very unwise thing to publish. “Come clean in X number of days or I’ll tell.” Fine. “Pay me or I’ll tell.” That’s blackmail and likely to get him in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Along the lines of Dan Chudnov’s comments:
“On Anonymity in Libraryland Blogging” by John Buschman, Mark Rosenzweig & Kathleen de la Peña McCook, page 3
Progressive Librarian Issue 29, Summer 2007.
[in Lib.Lit.full text if your library doesn't have a subscription.]

“Progressive Librarian” isn’t Open Access? Seems a little regressive to me.

Traditional and also all volunteer.
Some of PL is up [http://libr.org/pl/contents.html.

What is this all about?

There is an essay, “On Anonymity in Libraryland Blogging” that addresses anonymous blogging and expands on the link that Jessamyn provided in the main entry above.

Right. I meant what is the link that Jessamyn provided all about?

I love how pseudonymous blogging is evidently a heinous crime - but blackmail evidently isn’t. Ah the hypocrisy of libraryland…

Karen Schneider’s observations on the death of peer review demonstrate that it is not pseudonymous blogging that is at issue.
http://freerangelibrarian.com/2008/11/20/the-death-of-peer-review/

As if anything Haworth does heralds the death of peer review - which teh Free Range Librarian should know better than anyone.

I used to read The Annoyed Librarian blog in the false hope that one day soon, fro up there in her ivory tower of academia, she would reveal an idea or two that might be useful to those of us toiling away in the muck and mire of the public libraries. After several months I gave up. I find it quite … annoying … that she is now actually getting paid to lob her little stones at the efforts of hard-working librarians everywhere.

Post appears to have been taken down. Anyone who needs a copy/paste of what it did say, feel free to email me. Humph.

To read full post w/o pestering Jessamyn:
google url (http://onebiglibrary.net/story/dear-annoyed) and read cached copy.

See, I read some of AL’s stuff, went “Oh, it’s Libraryland’s Ann Coulter,” and stopped reading. I don’t feel a need to keep reading or to write long tracts about the AL. Why give him/her/them the attention they crave? Just let them natter on to whatever audience they can gather and stop giving them publicity.

I feel that as librarians, we should be capable of reading something and determining whether or not it is designed to be helpful or inflammatory. If it is inflammatory, then the best thing to do is stop fanning the fires and ignore it.

I don’t really care who the AL is. I don’t really give a darn what they think on certain topics. If LJ wants to waste their money on twaddle rather than decent drawings for their columnists, that’s their choice. Rather than freaking out, you’re probably better off laughing it off. It’ll get you a lot farther than blackmail.

Interesting. When I first read about this in FRL, all I could think was WTF?… my second thought, close on the heels of the first thought, was: god, I hate academia. They are such twits.

Thanks for the GODORT shoutout Jessamyn. GODORT’s actually running *several* google custom search engines. Besides the one you mention, there’s also one searching 1090 Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) with consultative status with the United Nations and another searching 340 Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs). These search engines will be very helpful to students and researchers on many topics in which IGOs and NGOs are active (AIDS, global development, environment, human rights, gender etc.).

On the non-GODORT side of things, I’m also building a custom search engine of library Questions&Answers sites (I described it over at LibrarianInBlack) so I’d highly recommend that libraries of all stripes create blogs with their questions and answers.

[...] ALA moves towards more open library content. Open Content für Bibliotheken (tags: netbib) [...]

Yes, this “open access” move will save me at least $42 next year, money that I can throw to SLA, where I expect to get a significantly greater ROI (easy to say since I’m currently getting none!). I’m happy.