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Thought I’d share this interesting bit of news with all. McMaster prides themselves on being innovative and the library strives to do the same, but we’re not the only ones on campus being innovative. Our bookstore, which I often frequent during breaks, has a cool new machine – it’s a print-on-demand machine. Apparently, we’re one of only 3 bookstores in the world who have one! It can print out a 250 page book in 5 minutes – pretty cool. They will print public domain items, giving them access to more than 1 million titles. Looks like the items being printed need to be scanned first, which means they will be parterning with the library’s kirtas scanner, at least for some items. Not sure if they are able to scan items there or not. A very intersting development on campus and I’m interested to see how much the new toy will get.

First of all, I saw this on TechCrunch today. I’ve mentioned the use of twitter for reference before and have heard people speak on it at conferences. As always, it seems libraries have taken a back seat. toanswer is a mashup of twitter and answers – exactly what reference should be doing. It seems many of our services are promoted better by others. What we have here is a marketing problem. We also have another issue here – the idea of the one big library. If libraries and librarians came together to offer one centralized reference service, how would we fare against these services? I think there is potential here for libraries but it is heavily reliant on cooperation. We see this happening, Second Life reference service is offered by librarians from around the globe, but I think we need to pursue these ideas a little more aggressively.

I’m off to IFLA to present with Amy Buckland next week. I’m quite excited – I’ve never done any international conferencing before. No doubt there will be a recap of the conference experience when I return.

It’s been forever since I’ve posted and feels like forever since I’ve been at work. I’ve finished my research leave which resulted in a paper for IFLA with Amy Buckland (and it’s already up!).

I also presented at workshop on Transforming Information Literacy: Do We Have the Skills at WILU with my great colleagues Karen Nicholson and Shawn McCann in BC. It went well, although as with most presentations, I would change things in the future. Participants seemed interested in Shawn’s demo of World of Warcraft but seemed reluctant to talk about literacies outside information literacy (which is perhaps understandable as it is an info lit conference, but we were introducing other 21st century fluencies such as digital literacy, media literacy, numeracy, scientific literacy, etc). I love WILU as a conference – small and intimate – and this year was no exception. Attended a number of sessions on peer tutoring, something I would like to get started here. I hope to start work on a student ambassador program and will share info as it develops.

Finally, I presented at the CLA annual conference on gov pubs 2.0. I hope to start doing some of the stuff I talked about (del.icio.us account for subject guides, google search for gov pubs and more). This presentation, along with the WILU presentation will be online soon – I’ll post links when they are. I’m also stepping down as convenor of the Access to Government Information Interest Group with CLA. It was a good but long trip in BC, completely with seeing family I hadn’t really seen in 20 years.

Next conference will be IFLA in August. One thing I’m finding with conferences lately is that our library really has become bleeding edge in many cases. Many of the presentations I go to, we’re already doing. When I talk about things we’re doing, many can not relate as they do not have the support to try things as we do. It’s something I need to be thinking when I create my presentations. I really am lucky to be working in my library!

With all of the research and presentations, it’s taking a little while to catch up on work. Summer means First Year Experience work is first and foremost – we’ll be having a scavenger hunt for Summer Orientation and will be included in a parent panel. Once that’s done, there’s just Welcome Day, Welcome Week and Clubsfest to plan.

And with all of my goings on, our library is still doing neat things. We just had a launch for our mass digitization project – a partnership with Kirtas Technologies, Ristech and LuLu. Congrats to all those working on these major projects!

And that’s all I have for now. You may have guessed that I will not be posting on CiL – there’s so much out there now. All you need to know is that it was the best conference eva!

Yes, I have been bad with my postings lately, but I’ve been conferencing and vacationing, both which are rejuvenating in their own ways. I thought I would use the next couple of posts to share my conference experiences, although I’m still processing some, so there may be follow up posts.

I attended a great SirsiDynix Institute on Gaming in Libraries by Jenny Levine. I finally received her book on the same topic and can’t wait to devour it. If you get a chance to hear her talk on the topic, I highly recommend it (it’s also archived at the SirsiDynix Institute and her blog).

One of the things she said really made sense to me. I’m sure others have heard this already, but I think this was the first time I had.

We can’t be the bosses, we need to be the strategy guide.

Bosses are the final monsters that need to be defeated to get to the next level to a gamer. we can’t be the one’s blocking their path. By being a strategy guide (what ever gamer uses to help them through the hardest parts), we can help them through their challenges. It’s a great metaphor for anyone in reference services. Let’s all aim to be that strategy guide!

Well, I’ve managed to put a few more things in the building, but it’s just the beginning so it will likely change soon (ie. better signage). It’s the first store front on the right. I thought I’d add a picture of the new space to help people identify the building, so here it is: