odd stuff - tech

Technoblindness

November 27, 2008 by 0 Comments

I just came back from catching a presentation done by a multimedia class. I’m sorry I missed the beginning and the rest of the presentations as this was quite enlightening. In a project called Lifecasting, students filmed a number of reactions to situations. I was most enthralled by two scenarios which filmed people staging things left behind/being stolen and invasions of personal space in a public atmosphere. In the cases where people left items behind or staged a theft, the people around them were generally oblivious to the action happening. Why? Because they were on their cell phones or staring at their computers. The same occurred when people invaded personal space – computer screens seemed to act as a barrier to the actions and conversations around them. I find it fascinating that we’ve used social technology such as cell phones and computers and use them in such anti-social ways, blocking out the world outside our small personal world.

This has implications for work on a reference desk. I know I am tied to my computer and while I try to look up and keep an eye out for people needing assistance, I wonder how many I’ve missed because I’m using technology as a barrier. I will certainly try to be more aware of my surroundings while I’m using technology.

Academic Librarianship

Speed Dating

November 24, 2008 by 1 Comment

Just finished my first speed dating meeting. No, it’s not what you’re thinking, at least, not exactly. We had visitors from another university visit us. We used the prinicples of speed dating to coordinate the meeting. People were invited based on the interests of the visitors and we had equal numbers on both sides. Everyone from our institution had 5 minutes with one of the visitors and then we moved on. We then had two longer half hour sessions in small groups. It was great! I need to work on my networking skills and this was a great way to ensure I talked with everyone. The biggest problem – 5 minutes ran out far too quickly! I learned lots from the visitors, about what they were doing and their questions made me think about what we’re doing. I highly recommend the speed dating meeting – it was fun and informative.

gov info

Common Look and Feel

November 24, 2008 by 1 Comment

The Government of Canada is rolling out a Common Look and Feel for all of their websites. While in theory, this is may be a good idea, I’m not sure I’m a fan of it. StatCan has started changing their site and while it has always been in need of work, I think this might be a step backward. I admit, I haven’t spent much time on the site to completely flush it out yet, but I am disappointed. The site search used to highlight the type of information, and it still does, but it seems more clunky. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I had just gotten used to the previous site. I will give it a shot but I’m not holding my breath. Take a look and see what you think.

Uncategorized

New Toys

November 17, 2008 by 3 Comments

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.

odd stuff

Me and my tag

November 6, 2008 by 1 Comment

After a discussion with a colleague, I decided to change my blog tag for fun. It’s been a couple of years on this blog so a change is well overdue. I’m thinking I should do this more often. If you’ve got suggestions (be nice please!), let me know.

In case you’re wondering, the new tag is in reference to my new dual-cord status. I shall always have power now!

odd stuff

The Culture of Now

November 5, 2008 by 2 Comments

Lately, I find that my level of concentration has not been up to its normal level. I think there are a lot of things that contribute to this – I spend too much time online (where I don’t read as deeply as I would with a book), too much time checking for new email and too much time with the tv on in the background. I’m sadly falling out of practice when it comes to deeper thinking and concentration and I hope to remedey this soon. I need to start unplugging more and sitting down and spending more than 10 minutes on one activity.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this relatively sudden lack of concentration. I love being online but I find that it is affecting the way I think. This turned my mind back to another topic that I often think about – history. My undergrad degree is in history and I continued my studies with classical history. I often find the historian in me emerging when I think about the Internet. Maybe it also has something to do with my work in government publications too. The Internet is changing the way history is written. We can not rely on the Internet to allow us to write history in the same way – we no longer have all of the documents that we once had. It’s far to easy to delete an email or an entire document. Webpages are constantly changed.

We have become a culture of now – we rely on tv, radio, the Internet for our information but there is little being done to preserve it. It is rare to go back and compare what was already shared, although there have certainly been more moves towards preservation through such things as Google Books and Internet Archive. I recently listened to a September podcast of CBC’s Spark (yes, I am behind on my podcast listening), which discussed the nature of the Culture of Now and the influence it has on us, including an interview with Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive, which I would recommend.

Libraries pride themselves on being guardians of our past – an important role. How do we compete with a culture of now? How do we make ourselves more relevant? Certainly we have a role in preservation but is there more we can be doing to help people see and understand in a culture of now? These are not new questions but they have been on my mind of late.

conferences

IL2008 Wrap-Up

October 31, 2008 by 0 Comments

I’m always later with my conference wrap-ups than I mean to be. During the conference, I’m busy meeting tweeps and meeting librarians and then there’s the work catch-up to come home to. As a result, my wrap-up will be rather brief since almost everyone has blogged about sessions I went to.

This was my first Internet Librarian and I’m already looking for ways to go back next year. It was a great conference with some really good sessions and great people. The one thing I keep taking away from these conferences is that we really need to do more evaluation of the services that we keep offering. We are creating some great services but I’d be interested in seeing more on how often these new services are being used. In fact, it’s something I’d like to try to figure out with our own Second Life reference project. It’s not an always an easy task to get the data on how a service is being used, especially as there is a push to continue moving forward rather than taking the time to stop and re-examine.

I highly recommend checking out twitter for any conference you attend – I heard about a lot of really good sessions via twitter, not to mention the evening activites.

Academic Librarianship - conferences - library 2.0 - Second Life

Creating 3D Reference

October 22, 2008 by 0 Comments

Thanks to all those who came to Amy’s and my session on Creating 3D Reference: Adventures in Second Life. It was a tough time slot – the last day, right after lunch on a sunny 31 degree day and up against the Pecha Kucha (which sounded like it was a blast next door). We were honoured to present with the Schanachies (and suitably awed). Here are the slides from our portion of the presentation from il2008. And a big thanks to Amy – a great presentation buddy! More to come on the conference when I return – it’s been amazing.

odd stuff

Blogs Abound

October 20, 2008 by 0 Comments

Yes, I read too many blogs (and often fall behind). I realize that I haven’t updated by blog roll since I started my blog, so I have added a link to my Google reader library list, in case you want to expand your own blogroll. Apologies if I’m not reading your blog … yet!

odd stuff - tech

Warning Sounds for Librarians

October 10, 2008 by 1 Comment

First of all, apologies for the extended silence. Between IFLA, First Year Experience activities and a slew of beginning of term instruction, I have had little time to think let alone blog. Now that things are quieting down, I hope to be more on the ball.

I decided to title this post after an article I read on BBC News a while back, Warning Sounded on Web’s Future (speaking of which, I’m trying to read the Future of the Web and How to Stop It – may have more on it later). The line that caught my attention is in bold at the very beginning of the article “The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.” Sir Tim Berners-Lee is worried about disinformation on the web. This is where I hear trumpets – duh duh da na! Enter Librarians! This is us! We should be and are doing this! One of the main tenants of information literacy is the evaluation of information in any form. Many of us have been teaching this for years – the skills to evaluate and examine information. So why doesn’t Sit Tim Berners-Lee know this? Why doesn’t anyone seem to know this? How do we get out and teach everyone how to evaluate information? This is a fundamental problem for us. We’re great at what we do but no one knows. It’s partly a marketing issue. It’s partly an outreach issue. It’s also the fact that many people think they are doing alright on the info front and don’t attend a library session to improve their skills. I teach basic library searching skills and web evaluation classes. While I hope the students take something away from both sessions, I hear time and again from faculty that the students felt the web session was more valuable – they learned they didn’t know everything about the web and how to tell good from bad info and it speaks more to the way they tend to search. So how do we let people know that we can help them wade through information swamp that is the Internet? I’m certainly open to suggestions. Does your library offer web or info evaluation sessions?

On a complete aside, it’s conference time. I just helped plan and attended my first Access conference – a very good time and I highly recommend it. A very techy conference, which at times could be intimidating for a tech wannabe like me, but a lot of great content for those with less than stellar tech skills. Up next is Internet Librarian – maybe I’ll see you there!