I was reading this book review by ricklibrarian today morning. The review was about Marilyn Johnson’s new book, This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. In the book review, it was stated “most librarians knock themselves out serving their clients regardless of pay, institutional support, or appreciation from society at [...]
Posts under ‘Library’
Microsoft Surface Table at Libraries
There is this table that has recently fascinated me. It is Microsoft Surface table. With both the commercial and the development version, this table looks absolutely fabulous to my librarian eyes. What is Microsoft Surface table? Imagine a coffee table whose surface works like an iPhone responsive to touch with its full computing power. I [...]
Does Your Library Have a Vision on e-Books?
I have to say I have a love-hate relationship with e-books. I love the idea of e-books. No matter where I am, I can instantly access it and start reading it on an electronic device. That’s great. As an expatriate, I dream about the day in which all the books I want to read written [...]
How Personal Should a Library Be in Social Media?
How many social media accounts does your library maintain? How do you keep them lively and up-to-date? OK, keeping up-to-date part is relatively easy. You just need to post updates on your library’s Facebook page, to add new posts to your library’s blog, and to keep twittering in your library’s Twitter. However, keeping it lively [...]
Present Policies for Future Special/Archival Collections
If you have a brand-new library for a brand-new organization, how would you build special collections for the organization? Ironically, it is easier to work on special collections when you already somehow have some stuff under the category of special collections. This is the case whether there existed any concrete plan and guidelines for collecting [...]
Information Unfettered – Augmented Reality
We often say we need to go online to find information about something. But the piece of information that we want is mostly about physical things in the real world. When you assemble scattered data and bring relations to one another, those data produce additional information because they were given a context, which is essential [...]
Libraries – Organizational Culture
Libraries often talk about changes. But for an organization that aspires to achieve a significant transformation from a real-time learning and information center, there seems to be not so much discussion about the change of organizational culture. Even at libraries where librarians are appointed as faculty rather than staff, there is often a strict hierarchy [...]
Magic is more in your staff than in technologies
Roy Tennant recently posted “The Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology” in TechEssence blog. Among the ten things, what I like most is No. 4: “Maximize the effectiveness of your most costly technology investment — your people.” In the other post, “Your ideas for “Top Ten Things“” a similar suggestion appears: “Allow [...]
My MLIS program experience
Thanks to a blog post, “MLIS Programs Need To Be Revamped,” I had a chance to reflect on my MLIS program experience. I am a relatively new graduate. Like many other LIS students, I have attended the program part-time while working full-time at libraries. Although I wished a few times that I were attending the [...]
Tips and Methods for Effective Screencasting
I have spent last week making a four-minute video tutorial on how to use a medical database called AccessMedicine. It has been a while since I have worked on screencasting. And of course, I lost all my documentation I have created in my previous workplace. So, it took a while for me to remember how [...]