ALA TechSource Blog

By Teresa Koltzenburg | [UPDATE: The title has been corrected from the original publishing of this post.]

Read more | 04/19/2006 - 17:26

By Tom Peters | Avatars need libraries, too, you know. An avatar—in this context—is "an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality." Last Thursday, the Alliance Library System officially announced that this summer it plans to begin offering library services to avatars who live and work in the 3D virtual space Second Life.

Read more | 04/17/2006 - 10:52

By Teresa Koltzenburg | Can we claim that there's a difference between watching television and playing a video game? or reading a book and surfing the Web? or writing a letter and writing an e-mail? or having a conversation and participating in some form of Instant Messaging? Does the mobility of telecommunications shift our everyday lives? Are we more individualized in contemporary culture than we were when people watched television in the 1960s and `70s?

Read more | 04/13/2006 - 18:28

By Karen G. Schneider | In my first article in this series, I wrassled with the biggest bear in the forest: how most online catalogs lack relevance ranking.

Read more | 04/03/2006 - 15:02

By Teresa Koltzenburg | From a constructivist perspective, Rock ‘n' Roll Library, a mini-video project produced by some Pitt library grad students for National Library Week (which starts this Sunday), could be a shining example of a constructivist-learning activity.

Read more | 04/01/2006 - 01:41

By Tom Peters | Near the conclusion of the Computers in Libraries Conference in D.C. last week, Paul Miller (pictured at your left) from Talis, a United Kingdom-based library-automation vendor, presented an interesting session about the challenges of Web 2.0 to libraries.

Read more | 03/30/2006 - 11:13

By Tom Peters | Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet and American Life Project gave Friday's keynote address. He's a very lively speaker—mentally I started referring to him as Peppie le Pew—and he has lots of data and facts about how Millenials (those born between 1982 and 2000) think, use the Internet, search for information, communicate and form communities, and believe in themselves and the technologically and media rich lives they lead. If Stephen Abram wants facts, Peppie has 'em.

Read more | 03/25/2006 - 08:35

By Tom Peters | Thursday—The second day of the Computers in Libraries Conference in DC was packed with sessions. Megan Fox from Simmons College started it all off with her keynote presentation about planning for a handheld mobile future.

Read more | 03/25/2006 - 08:12

By Tom Peters | Wednesday—The first day of the Computers in Libraries Conference in Washington, DC. It's the 21st annual, but my first. I was up at 3:00 a.m. to catch my six-a.m.-red-eye flight from Kansas City.

Read more | 03/23/2006 - 10:56

By Teresa Koltzenburg | “Libraries are…" I can't finish that sentence; I can't seem to come up with an encompassing term or pithy phrase to finish it in a way that would do justice to the notion of the library, the value libraries provide to humanity, and all the l

Read more | 03/22/2006 - 22:51