Amy Buckland (who was recently named a 2008 Library Journal “Mover and Shaker”) has passed along the following notice which is also a great opportunity to highlight some of the emerging leaders in the library community. Why not take a moment to nominate someone you know who fits the following criteria? LAST CALL for emerging […]
A recent post on Librarian.net reminded me that this year's list of Library's Journal's 2008 Movers & Shakers is now out. Congrats to Amy Buckland for getting the nod! (<old man voice>I remember when Amy was just a wee lass, firing off e-mails to library school-focused blogs asking about the merits of various schools.</old man […]
The Globe and Mail recently had an article on the benefits of reading and good literacy to your health (PDF). This is probably not a huge surprise but lines like “While we obsess about our weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the single best predictor of good health and longevity is probably literacy.” are pretty […]
Each year, our library system gives out four awards to our branches – one for Service, one for Programming, one for Branch Development and one for Branch of the Year which incorporates elements of all three plus more. Right now, I'm working through nearly 200 quarterly reports (48 branches x 4 reports per year) to […]
LibraryThing is already a wicked cool service but it's getting better all the time. One of their latest features is LibraryThing Local which is “a new [LibraryThing] sub-site devoted to finding, mapping and describing the world's bookstore, library, book fair and festival—as well as all the readings, signings, lectures and other events they host.” Here […]
MetaFilter has a good discussion on the death of libraries, this time about a library in the UK. “Hendon's library's opening hours have been cut, a cafe has taken the place of part of the fiction section, and a computer learning zone has replaced the periodicals room. When I complained, a local councillor wrote back […]
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been on the road for the past two months doing computer and Internet training at our various branches around SE Saskatchewan (for anyone who doesn't know about our territory, if you draw a straight line from Regina east to the Manitoba border and […]
It's fascinating to think about the relationships we have with our colleagues in this digital age compared to how it was in pre-Internet (or at least the Jurassic era of the Internet – the years around 1995 or so). Back then, you would become colleagues at University but then, it took an extra special effort […]
Continuing yesterday's trend of posting items long after their “best before” date, here's a press release from the Canadian Library Association summarizing their second annual survey of challenges to materials in Canadian libraries.Oliver Twist, The Golden Compass and Rolling Stone magazine were among the library materials challenged by Canadian library users in 2007, according to […]
Ross Dawson, a business consultant who tracks different customs, devices, and institutions on what he calls an Extinction Timeline, predicts that libraries will disappear in 2019. He's probably right as far as the function of the library as a civic monument, or as a public repository for books, is concerned. On the other hand, in […]
