Whistleblowing, Ethics, and Internet Use

March 18, 2008 in Community Development, Ethics, Information Policy, Leadership, communications, diversity, family, media, politics

UPDATE: Since I’m venturing into potentially controversial territory, I thought it would be a good time to remind my readers that this is my commentary on a situation that occurred in a library in California and not necessarily the opinions of my employer. I will say that I believe we are [...]

Treading on the Commons: Book Recommendations and the Wisdom of the Crowd

March 17, 2008 in Community Development, Customer Service, Just For Fun, Leadership, Reading, Trends, accessibility, family, ideas, kids, library2, slowlibrary, technology

I love the idea of recommendation services like LibraryThing, Bibliophil and Books iRead. The main reason I like these services is because of their potential to identify items for me that I may never encounter on my own. You have to accept that I am a) a busy parent with little time [...]

APIs: Who? What? Why? How?

March 11, 2008 in Professional Development, coding, ideas, technology, tutorials

APIs (Application Program Interfaces) are among those things that most presenters talk about with the caveat: “You do not have to know how to do it; you only need to know they exist.” You have to be fair to the presenters — an api is not really something you can explain without [...]

Does a Fish Know It’s Wet? : Access to Scholarly Journals in Public Libraries

March 3, 2008 in Community Development, Information Policy, Reading, Reference, Science, Trends, accessibility, communications, e-learning, slowlibrary

Heather Morrison discusses what she calls an “access gap” for scholarly journals in public libraries.   She claims:
The local public library will have interlibrary loan service; however, with limited staffing looking after everything from storytime for preschoolers to special services for teens, adults, seniors, and more, not to mention buying books and running the library, the [...]