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Careers for Info Utopia: The optimism of a new semester | Blatant Berry

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By on October 14, 2014 1 Comment

BerryWebB Careers for Info Utopia: The optimism of a new semester | Blatant BerryThe beginning of each semester always rejuvenates me. There is nothing more stimulating than those first few sessions with a class of expectant students, arriving with their high energy, curiosity, and desire to participate and impress. My new class at Pratt Institute’s SILS came to New York from all over America and the world. The students range in age from their 20s to their 60s, which has so often been typical of my LIS classes. It is a great privilege and honor to work with them to try to answer the accursed questions that continue to plague our profession.

In prior years I have worried for these new librarians about the shortage of jobs in our field, the low salaries, and the uncertainty in the outlook for libraries of all types.

This year, however, I feel much more positive about the opportunities available to these new information professionals and more optimistic about the potential for the future and the careers that they will find. I have no doubt now that they will move us nearer to the resolution of the many challenges we face. Read more…

 

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Left Behind by the EdTech Surge | From The Bell Tower by Steven Bell

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By on February 19, 2014 Leave a Comment

steven bell newswire Left Behind by the EdTech Surge | From The Bell TowerThere’s loads of activity happening in the world of educational technology. New startups. Dozens of websites for managing learning activities. Apps by the dozens. Academic librarians seem out of the loop.

A few months ago I subscribed to the weekly email newsletter from an organization called EdSurge. It’s subtitled “a weekly newsletter for innovators in education.” Depending on you how you feel about the phrase “innovators in education,” you may be thinking that’s exactly who you are—or maybe you’ve had your fill of innovation talk. While EdSurge does dedicate about half of each issue to the K-12 startup scene, there’s also reporting on the latest educational technology resources and utilities. Some of these are startup websites that may or may not be here for long. What it reveals is a veritable flood of new educational technologies. It leads me to question if academic librarian educators are managing to keep up with all these new resources. Are we taking time to investigate and explore these new tools or are we falling back on our old familiar standbys? Based on some time I spent listening to an instructional technology discussion at ALA Midwinter, I think it might be the latter rather than the former.

Some Old Wine

Admittedly, some of these new instructional technologies are simply variants, or even outright replications, of existing educational technologies. Coggle, for example, is hardly the first web-based mind-mapping tool, but it claims to add new collaborative sharing capabilities.  Some replication is expected, because it’s well known in the startup world that the trick is not always being first to the market but being the product in the marketplace that catches on with users (think MySpace and Facebook). However, that strategy is no surefire path to success. Right now a slew of imitators are trying to move into Snapchat’s space, but so far the original is still number one with the user community. Still, while discovering some truly original utilities takes a bit of work, checking out newcomers to an old space may lead to a great new find with better options or performance (think screencasting utilities).

Read more…

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Marian the Cybrarian – The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Brian Taylor

For all the concern expressed about the imminent demise of the college library, there may never have been a time when librarians seemed more vital, forward-thinking—even edgy—than they do now.

It’s a dated reference, but today’s information professionals often remind me more of Ian Malcolm, the “chaos theorist” played by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park (1993), than of the eyeglass-chain-wearing librarians of yore, if they ever existed in significant numbers. (I have seen only one, Mrs. Evelyn, from my elementary school in the early 70s.)

It’s not that many of today’s librarians routinely dress in sunglasses and black leather (though some do). It’s that, more than any other class of professionals in higher education, librarians possess a comprehensive understanding of the scholarly ecosystem. They know what’s going on across the disciplines, among professors and administrators as well as students. No less important, they are often the most informed people when it comes to technological change—its limits as well as its advantages. Read more…

 

Designing Better Libraries » Shifting Too Far To The Experience

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[Designing Better Libraries is a blog about design thinking and how it applies to library settings. The goal of this blog is to provide information, news and ideas that librarians can use to design a great library user experience for their communities. Among the topics we’ll be covering are instructional design, innovation, technology design, and the application of new media to design – and of course – design thinking.]

On a recent visit to the new Hunt Library at the Centennial Campus of the North Carolina State University, I observed an unusual sight – for most libraries that is. A group of individuals, they might have been prospective students and their parents or perhaps just a group participating in some summer workshop, was highly immersed in a rather unique library experience. They were learning about and watching a demonstration of the Library’s robotic Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS), and rather enjoying how the Bookbot’s robot arm moved crates of books to and fro. The visitors were clearly immersed in this particular library experience. With a glass wall through which it could all be observed, the building’s designers clearly intended for this spectacle to catch the attention of all those entering the library. While it delivered a unique experience, did it motivate anyone in the crowd to search the catalog or move on to the stacks to find a book of their own? Or did they simply move on to the next destination point the way one might if touring the White House or Hoover Dam?

The question of the extent to which we should be re-thinking and re-designing the library experience as both immersive and interactive was the subject of an essay questioning similar work in the world of art museums. The author, Judith H. Dobrzynski, asks if it shouldn’t be enough to just view the artwork by yourself or with other people and obtain enjoyment or satisfaction from being exposed to great art. Why does it have to be embellished by some sort of artificially attached experience? She writes:

For decades, museums have offered social experiences — the fact that you can talk while you’re in the galleries has always given them an edge over the performing arts — and that is good. Now is the balance shifting too far to the experience? Are they losing what makes them unique? Should museums really follow the path of those “experience” businesses…In this kind of world, the thrill of standing before art — except perhaps for works by boldface-name artists like van Gogh, Vermeer, Monet and Picasso — seems not quite exciting enough for most people. What’s a museum to do? Read more….

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40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and Outreach | American Libraries Magazine

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40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and OutreachBy Sanhita SinhaRoy

via 40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and Outreach | American Libraries Magazine.

Mobile phone apps

The desire to learn about useful mobile apps is rampant among librarians, judging by the overflow crowd at Sunday’s Conversation Starter billed to deliver ““40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and Outreach.”

More than 200 conference-goers packed the small room booked for the session, with many peering through the doorway and sitting on the floor. During their presentation, branch manager Richard Le and adult services librarian Mel Gooch, both from San Francisco Public Library, shared what they have found to be dozens of apps that provide innovative services, useful mobile content, and opportunities for outreach.

Here’s the full list of the 40 apps they discussed, as well as some suggestions Le and Gooch provided for ways in which librarians can explore and integrate them into their library’s mobile strategy. They range from the more obvious (Amazon, Google Maps, and Dropbox) to the more obscure (EasyBib, SitOrSquat, and SportsTap). Most are compatible with both Android and iOS (Apple) devices, and all are free unless otherwise noted: Read more….

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