Monday, April 28, 2008

It might be spring...

I got the bicycle out yesterday (and rode 4 miles!) so I think it might really be spring this time. The deer seem to have moved on, leaving only chewed tulip leaves in the front flower beds - I'm going to have to investigate deer-proofing tips out there.

Saturday night I was at the the great Mannheim Steamroller Fresh Aire concert and guess who was the French horn player? Our very own Greg Notess! There were 10 Bozeman Symphony players making up the MS orchestra, so that was fun to see.

I read this idea yesterday but can't find the link today: a university (I think) is using a hot dog cart for roaming reference work. When I first read it, I thought it was just in the library, but the photo showed the cart (and librarian) outside - using a wireless laptop, and some basic reference tools, they can be providing service where people are. Now that sounds like a really clever way to expand library services! Even if we could only offer that in the summer months here in Montana, it could be interesting.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Twitter

If Suzanne Reymer can cave in and sign on to Twitter, I can do the same. I've been resisting - even after seeing it in action at CIL a few weeks ago I wasn't sure it was really worthwhile. But maybe if enough of us in libraries start using it, we might come up with something? It is an easy way to keep up with people I wouldn't ordinarily follow, like Michael Sauers (who was in Bozeman a few years ago and astutely pointed out that the ultimate goal of the Reference Desk is to get people to leave). I admit I still haven't watched the video Steve McCann sent out (but did forward it to 2 coworkers who were also trying out Twitter) but plan to, and maybe that will be convincing?

At least this gets Steve some followers (a few years ago at Offline he showed his MySpace page, and sadly had no friends at the time).

I'm not sure I'm going to go for Twitter on my cell phone - there is a limit to how much information, and how often, I want.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Home Again

We made it home late yesterday and I haven't had a chance to even look at my notes from all the CIL conference sessions. Lots of staff from BPL are in Great Falls now for MLA - I can't find a blog or wiki for this year's conference so I don't know what's going on!

(Here are the InfoTubey Awards mentioned in the earlier post - very clever!).

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

CIL cont'd

This was a great conference again, and we still have one more day. Greg Notess was part of a great panel this afternoon promoting lots of web 2.0 technologies (wikis, videocasting, etc) although he played the part of the skeptic: why do we need these (similar to some of my earlier comments on some of these, too!). But after dinner we went to the InfoTubey Awards, where we saw 5 Youtube videos related to libraries - very entertaining! I can see some good uses for videos on library sites, and lots of other good ideas, too.

Time to return to Bozeman and think of ways to implement all the fun stuff we saw here.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Computers in Libraries

It's that time again - Lois and I are off to Washington DC for the Computers in Libraries conference this week. It's not like this is a regular event for us - we went once 6 years ago - but we had such a great time we've been trying to get back ever since. Thanks to MLA and our Library Foundation we've been able to make it happen this year. There are so many good ideas out there - we know we'll come back really enthused about new ways to use technology in the library.

The down side to this trip is we won't be at the MLA conference this year, so to everyone who is going: have a great time!