By Michelle Boule | Libraries have always been about community. Whether the library serves an elite clientele or is open to all, a library is defined by its community. Librarians fill shelves and populate web pages based on the information needs and desires of their communities.
ALA TechSource Blog
By Daniel A. Freeman | We just wrapped up the first session of the ALA TechSource Workshop Evaluating and Implementing Web Scale Discovery Services in Your Library with Jason Vaughan and Tamera Hanken. The presentation included some fantastic discussion, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for participants and the general public to continue that here. Do you have follow-up questions from session 1? Do you have questions you’d like to see addressed in session 2? General questions or the need for clarification? Go ahead and ask them in the comments area!
By Daniel A. Freeman | If you try to keep your library on the cutting edge, you probably know Meredith Farkas. Meredith, Head of Instructional Services at Portland State University in Oregon and an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science, has been writing about social networking, libraries on the web and mobile technology just about as long as anyone.
By Daniel A. Freeman | We just finished up our fantastic webinar, the 2011 ALA Annual Tech Wrapup. Our panelists did a fantastic job of covering what went on tech-wise at the 2011 ALA Annual Conference from many different angles. If you missed the live event, the archive is available here:
By Daniel A. Freeman | As you probably heard, last week at the ALA Annual Conference, 3M announced the launch of its new Cloud Library e-Book Lending Service. This new service is a comprehensive platform that offers a broad range of options for libraries looking to lend e-books and even e-readers to patrons.
By Kate Sheehan | I have long been a fan of NPR’s On The Media. It’s interesting to me both as a citizen who tries for a varied media diet and as a librarian. The show frequently touches on how we consume, process, and access information. Just before ALA, they did a politics-focused piece about the echo chamber that could just as easily apply to answering reference questions, looking for ideas in librarianship, or making decisions about purchasing technology for your library.
By Patrick Hogan | Our friends at WebJunction will host the free webinar Finding a Legal Comfort Zone on the Web with Eli Neiburger and Barbara Jones, on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 2 p.m. Eastern. Neiburger and Jones are contributing writers to our December Library Technology Report Privacy and the Freedom of Information in 21st-Century Libraries (vol. 46 / no. 8). The report presents analysis from the library community's intellectual freedom leaders alongside articles from a few of its most active technology advocates. "We hope to open up lines of communication," writes Angela Maycock in the Introduction, "to invite one another into our separate spheres, and to ensure that our thinking and our conclusions are better informed by the insights of one another." Pairing the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom's Jones with the provocative Neiburger, the webinar promises to accomplish that along with simulating conversation in the chat window.
By Daniel A. Freeman | We're happy to announce that we'll be wrapping up ALA Annual 2011 with an exciting ALA TechSource Webinar! Don't miss this free event--our panel of experts will discuss what they learned and what stood out at Annual Conference. From ebooks to tablets to RFID and library systems, you'll get insightful perspective on the technology buzz in New Orleans!
By Jason Griffey | Almost exactly 6 months ago, I wrote up my first impressions of the Google CR-48 Chromebook, the first dedicated hardware device to use the Google Chrome operating system. In the intervening time there have been tons of software upgrades to ChromeOS, and true to their word Google launched the first commercially available Chromebooks in cooperation with Samsung and Acer. Last week I received a tweet asking me what I thought: .bbpBox81767828390285313 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/profile_background_images/63948495/00895_coloredwindows_1680x1050.jpg) #C0DEED;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block} @griffey What was your final verdict on the Chromebook? Wondering if it might be useful to have for workforce development in libraries...less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyLibrarianry LibrarianRy So it seemed worth revisiting, especially as I think one part of the Chromebook is particularly interesting for libraries. I’ll get to that in a second.
By Michelle Boule | Lee Rainie has been directing the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project for the past 10 years. He was recently interviewed by Project Information Literacy about a new book he is writing about what he calls the “new social operating system.” In the interview, Lee says some interesting things about the way information is used and created and the role librarians play in this new operating system.