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July 29, 2006

NY Times Librarian of the Year Award

Nominations for the sixth annual New York Times Librarian Awards are now being accepted. The awards will honor 21 public librarians. A link to the nomination form is at NJLA.org and at the New York Time's Community site. Added bonus for procrastinators: this year, you can submit the entire nomination online. The deadline for all nominations is September 15, 2006. Nominate a wonderful colleague today!

In addition, in September and October, The Times will accept nominations of academic librarians working in university and college libraries for the NY Times Academic Librarian Awards. Look for more information on this award program soon.

Posted by at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Honors and Awards

July 21, 2006

Job Hotline & RSS feeds

The NJLA jobs page is now offering RSS feeds of new postings.

Why not have job openings come to you instead of you going to it? It's as easy as setting up a feed using an online aggregator or a desktop product. The NJLA site has more information.

Job updates are generally posted on Wednesdays. The feed you set up will automatically get updated when the postings are updated.

Posted by Ranjna Das at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Library 2.0

July 19, 2006

"Conversation, Community, Connections & Collaboration"

Seventy or so lucky librarians got to see Michael Stephens' and Jenny Levine's "Roadshow" at Princeton PL July 18th. Their travelling presentation is called "Conversation, Community, Connections, and Collaboration: Practical, New Technologies for User-Centered Services" and it's everything you (and your administration!) need to know about actually implementing Library 2.0 technologies.

If you aren't sure what Library 2.0 refers to, take a look at Ranjna's previous post (last one on the page) on the subject, this ALA TechSource blog post or this reading list.

I'm not going to summarize the entire 5-hour workshop here, but I will highlight some points and ideas I thought were extra-important:

Librarian 2.0
This new kind of librarian approaches librarianship and our customers in special ways. (I'm paraphrasing from Michael & Jenny's presentation heavily here.) She utilizes the social tools of Web 2.0, gets the long tail concept and accepts the wisdom of crowds.

Librarian 2.0 should also probably read the following, according to our presenters:
OCLC Pattern Recognition
OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources
The World is Flat
Blink
The Cluetrain Manifesto
The Future of Music

Six Things to Do Now
One of the greatest things about this Web/Library 2.0 stuff is that so many of the tools are free and easy to use - why not try it? What's the worst that can happen? Michael and Jenny suggest a few things we can all do at our libraries with little fuss.

* Start a "What's New at the Library" blog with Blogger (I also like WordPress.com).
* Appoint a trend reporter - someone who reads inside and outside the field to see what our customers are actually doing. Some sources: Wired, USA Today, Newsweek.
* Train on RSS in your library
* Tell your vendors you want RSS in your products
* Learn about Library 2.0

Oh, yeah - Learn About RSS!
How I wish it had a better name! It's really important, and it's going to get bigger and bigger. You might not even realize you're using it. Do you have a My Yahoo! page with news on it? You're using RSS! Jenny told us that future versions of Microsoft Outlook are going to have an RSS folder, which will make the RSS concept even more mainstream.

There was so much more valuable information packed into this session - I can't wait to see what these two do next! Thanks Jenny and Michael!!

For another perspective on the day, check out Amy Kearns' post on Library Garden.

Posted by Jessica Adler at 3:42 PM | Comments (3)
Category: Library 2.0