Library of Congress then and now

On this day in library history Thomas Jefferson named John J Beckley as the very first Librarian of Congress. Beckley, who was sent to Virginia from London by his family started his working life as an indentured servant before working his way up to not only finish university but also own property and serve twice as Mayor or Richmond, Virginia. All this before joining the Library of Congress in 1802 earning the princely sum of 2 dollars a day. But his time as the LOC was short lived, Beckley died only five years later. Interestingly, when was Beckley was appointed he had no formal librarian training and to this day no special qualifications are prescribed by law for the job of Librarian of Congress.

Fast forward to last Wednesday and a hawk was found trapped in the Library of Congress. (The Great Hall shown above) The female Cooper's hawk, nicknamed Jefferson, proved to be a difficult bird to catch, quickly became dehydrated and emaciated. The news of the hawk quickly made the social networking rounds and the librarians at the LOC were received comments and suggestions via the LOC blog. But after much determination (and a few sacrificial bait birds) good news from the LOC. Jefferson was captured earlier this morning! Jefferson will spend a some time in rehabilitation but is expedited to make a full recovery and should be out terrorizing the local starling population soon.




Sounds like the end of January is a busy time at the LOC

-AB

6 more sleeps until the ALIA Information Online Conference. I am so lucky! I'm attending all three days AND I'm participating in a mentoring program where I'll get to meet some of the 'rock star' librarians who's work I've been reading.
So cool

-AB

Library Day in the Life (of a school library)

Well, here goes my Library Day in the Life post. This week is sort of strange, so it won't really showcase how things are normally run around here, but that's how it goes. Due to training (and BDO) I'm only in my Library for one day this week, so this will truly be a Day In the Life.

To the left there is Palmer Bear, our Library's mascot. The girls just love to read to him. He's holding one of his (=my) favourite books.

Happy Library Day in the Life!

8:10am

Arrived at work a bit late this morning, the students are still away (they start back up next week) so today will mostly be an admin day. The new staff are at orientation on our other campus so this place will be a bit of a ghost town. But I have the AmLib 2011 Checklist to work through, the magazines that have piled up over the summer to accession and a Library Lovers Day display to create out of thin air. That should keep my busy.

10:21am

Hungry, is it morning tea time yet? AmLib checklist is done, well as much as I can do. I'll have to talk to our tech guru in the senior school library to find out what I'm meant to do and not meant to do. Can't go breaking the system my first week back.

12:24

Almost lunch time. How did that happen? Finished up my Library Lovers display. We are going to get the girls to add notes about what they love about their school library. We did that last year and ended up with a really wonderful display and some quotes were used in the school's newsletter. My favourite quote was 'when all else fails, the library doesn't', out of the mouths of babes, eh? We are updating our web site this year so I'm hoping to get some good quotes from the students that I can share on our page. I read about James Sheahan Catholic High School where they posted photos of the teachers' wedding photos in the library and students had to guess who each teacher was. That's a clever idea I thought, maybe next year.

2:30
The pile of periodicals is almost to a reasonable level, don't know that I'll make it to the new magazines this arvo, seeing as I'll be out of the Library the rest of the week and the kids would rather have the newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid over the newest Tennis Australia (and a girl can't accession everything, ya know?)

3:50
Almost time to go. (I finish up at 4 most days). Must remember that I wont be back until next week, don't forget the training manual for tomorrow and the 'problem periodical' to dicuss with the trainers.

4:00
Just got an email about the mentoring program I'm participating in at the ALIA Online Conference next week and I must say I'm SO STOKED! Looks like it will be a huge learning/networking opportunity for me. And the conference itself it going to be amazing. I hope I get a chance to meet Sarah Houghton-Jan at some point. She's giving one of the keynote speeches at the conference. But I digress.


I'm not going to be able to blog much for the rest of the week, unless anyone is interested in AmLib tips. Is it bad form to blog information from a training session? (yeah, probably)



-AB

(of course I forgot my camera at work and had to drive back to retrive it...ug)

Mobile library services

I came across an interesting blog post from Tiffinianne about applying the punk rock ethic to mobile library services. She has a look at the research from Pew, what some libraries are already doing out there and also looks at the detractors. Tiffinianne recently presented one of her DIY projects at the ALA Midwinter in San Diego. (rock on!)

I am a big fan of libraries finding their own way when it comes to technology but...as Tiffinianne points out it can be quite difficult if the staff don't have the skill set to pull off what the want to achieve. They can end up spending way too much time with very little outcome.

You know what I want? I want a Trove app that I can put on my Droid phone. So if I am out somewhere (dinner, bookshop, etc) I can scan the barcode and Trove will let me know if my local libraries (yes, I have 4 library cards in my wallet) hold the book I want. Not too much to ask, is it? (and yes, I should really post that on their bulletin board, because how do they know what I'm thinking, Trove is awesome but they are not mind readers...yet)

-AB

Book Origami

How amazing is this?

Artist Isaac Salazar folds these unbelievable works of art out of books that were probably destined for the rubbish.

Check out these other Books of Art

How cool would this be as an image on a promotional poster?

(via Lost At E Minor)

-AB

Hello world.

Library closure protest

A library in Stony Stratford near Milton Keynes in the UK has come up with a very unique way to communicate the message to the local council that the library is important to the community. (The library is currently facing 'severe' closures.)

The library sent out 6,000 letters to everyone in the community and asked them to check all of the books out of the library.

every
single
book

See, they wanted to show the council (who meet in the library) the 'gaping void' that would be left in the community if the library closed.

The above photo is a shot of the empty shelves. Brilliant

A great quote from a local resident: 'The library is the one place where you find five-year-olds and 90-year-olds together, and it's where young people learn to be proper citizens'. It's crazy even to consider closing it - they should be finding ways to expand its services and bring even more people in."

How awesome is this community??? (cross posted in INF206 Facebook page)

-AB


But if you want to see books on shelves check out Bookshelf Porn :)

Social Media Week

Social Media Week will be celebrated at New York Public Library the week of February 7, 2011. Nice to see a big public library get involved like this. The talks they have up at the moment are Future Library: Socializing History with Maps and The Inner Workings: Staffing for Social Media. Both sound pretty darn interesting to me. Well done NYPL.

Social Media Week events are being held around the world (sadly, none in Australia). But I think it is interesting how this falls just a week after the ALIA Information Online conference.

There are some interesting looking talks around the world. 10 Ways to Suck at Social Media, Hosted by Chemistry is on in London, Sustainable Flashmob, Hosted by Foodspotting and Whole Foods Market in New York, and Empowering Women Through Social Media in Hong Kong all sound like they would be worth attending. (cross posted in INF206 facebook page)

Now where did I put that worm hole....

-AB

Personal Learning Network

My Personal Learning Network on Prezi

Above is a Prezi I created to reflect my Personal Learning Network. It contains Web 2.0 sources, organisations I participate in and work (both current and past). It was created using Prezi. I found Prezi both powerful and frustrating at the same time. The end result is a reasonably slick presentation. It is a very interesting tool that could be a nice alternative to Powerpoint.

After collecting the information for my Personal Learning Network I was quite surprised at how many sources I have. I probably don't take advantage of them as much as I should, what with working full time and studying part time. I do collect and share information but I haven't been producing as much as I should.
Also, I probably need to be more involved in 'real life' connections, but again with work and study my time is very limited.

In regards to the Utecht’s 5 stages of PLN adoption, I am probably somewhere in the middle of stage 3 'know it all'. I have more than 30 blogs in my 'library' folder in Google Reader 10 or so library Twitter feeds I watch and a few libraries as contacts in Flickr. It gets to be a bit overwhelming at times. This exercise has helped me to see that I need to find ways to better organise the information coming in so that it is more manageable.

So for 2011 my New Years resolution (and I don't normally make New Years resolutions) will be to

1. Explore ways to better organize the information I consume
2. Find ways to connect with actual people in my industry in person
3. Produce and share more online

-AB

Virtual talks regarding Games in Libraries using 'guild chat'. (cross posted in INF206 facebook page)

AB

Arizona State University 'Library Minute' Videos

I had a look at 5 videos from Arizona State University‘s ‘Library Minute’ presented by Anali Perry. Over all they were entertaining and very informative. It's clear that ASU is attempting to communicate with students in a more informal way. ASU describes these as 'one minute peeks into services and resources at the ASU Libraries. At the time of this post there were 27 Library Minutes which have been viewed many times. The most popular of the series is the 'RefWorks' video which has been viewed 3,325 times.

· The 5 videos I watched were

• · Mobile web
• · Top 5 resources for online students
• · Meet your subject librarian
• · Academic articles
• · RefWorks (a citation manager for students)

The Library also has a 'Library Channel' on the university web site. This blog has links to the Library's iTunes page, Flickr page, Twitter feed and also links to previously mentioned videos. The Twitter feed communicates news from the Library answers student's questions and the Flickr photostream primarily contains photos from Library events

But do these satisfy the 4 C's of social media as set out in the class reading?

• · Collaboration- The Library Channel on You Tube includes videos made by other organizations and ASU students (see the Silent Dance video)
• · Conversation-The Twitter feed is definitely a two way conversation between staff and students
  
• · Community-The videos on You Tube invite students to be a part of the library community with their friendly tone
  
• · Content Creation- All of the sources I viewed (You Tube, Twitter, Library Blog and Flickr) contained content that could be helpful to students, staff and other libraries.
  

In conclusion, ASU library has embraced web 2.0 technologies in an effort to communicate with and received communications from students and staff. In this respect I find their efforts to be a success.