The Librarian's Lounge

IL 2007

Oh, Internet Librarian 2007, I am sorry I missed you. Perhaps we will meet next year. In the meantime, I've heard some great things about the conference from several of my colleagues who came back bursting with enthusiasm and frustration - enthusiasm for all the great new technology out there and dreams of what our library could be doing with it; frustration from being unable to go forward with almost all of it due to IS constraints that are out of our library's control. One of those returning made what I thought was a very important point today during a meeting - 2.0 technology is already the norm. It's not new anymore. And our library in particular (although I'm sure there are many others with the same problem) is getting more behind the times every day because of some very unreasonable web filtering that keeps staff from becoming web 2.0 literate. Which, of course, keeps us from helping our community with it. What's the easiest way to make a librarian's life a living hell? Take away their freedom to access information.

Anyway, one of the neatest things I heard about from the conference is The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County's fine-payer for teens in Teen Second Life. Apparently, they have something like an ATM that the teens can use in-world to pay off their fines. What I love about this idea is that it's practical, it's located in a place where teens already are ("go where your users are"), and it has the potential to be used in some rather creative ways. Okay, they can pay off their fines in Lindens; now how about extending the service by making it possible for them to work off their fines in-world by reading, building, scripting, hosting events, etc.? It's great that this public library has taken initiative to reach their teen population in Teen Second Life. Here's hoping that more libraries will see the importance of creating a presence in virtual worlds in order to stay relevant to the part of the population who could become life-long library users.

Library wiki

Check out the section on libraries and gaming.

If we can get enough of us librarians to really work on the wiki by adding all our tips, tricks, and experiential knowledge, this will turn into an amazing resource for our field.

Bookclub blogs

The Paradise Valley Community College Library has started using a Wordpress blog for a book club. This would be a nice supplement to any in-house book clubs. It could allow patrons to hop online and carry on discussions before and after a meeting, add to a library's online presence, foster a sense of community among the members, and provide a way for people to participate even if they can't make a meeting. Oh, and did I mention Wordpress is free?

Graffiti Art

Want to brighten up a public space? Consider throwing a LED Throwies party. I'm all about Christmas Lights, so of course this looks way cool to me. It might make an interesting teen project, too, especially if your building is one they would stick to.

Tag Bundles

I was playing around with del.icio.us today and noticed a feature that allows you to "bundle" your tags into groups. As I was trying it out, I started thinking how this system of tagging is becoming more and more like general cataloging in a library, with ranges of words instead of numbers in DDC or letters in LCSH to stand for broad topics under which falls a variety of sub-categories.

Recently, one of the guest lecturers in a class I'm taking hesitated to even talk about tagging, knowing that there were several LIS students present. He said he always feels weird about discussing tags in front of people who have been doing basically just that for years. I appreciated that comment. My hope is that as tagging becomes more heavily adopted, respect for library cataloging and the profession in general will only grow. Perhaps this will be another point of entry for librarians  in the digital world, a way to prove our relevance and skills in organizing and retrieving information for the masses as we've always done.

A dialogue with the community at-large could be started just on tagging alone. What about teaching a class on tagging? Who could be better at suggesting subject headings and strategies for organizing links than a librarian?

Just in time for Valentine's Day: Speed-dating at the library

They're trying it in Belgium. I can't count the number of times I've heard my friends say how hard it is to meet people outside of going to a bar or spending big bucks on dating services. I think this could be a great thing - bringing people together at the library. After all, the library is a community space and we humans are social creatures. In the stereotypical sense, most people wouldn't think of a library as being a place to meet someone special, not with all those shushing old librarians around. But why not? People meet in bookstores all the time. I say bring in the coffee, set up the service bell, and call out to all singles that the library is a hip place where you should be hanging out!