This seems like a fitting topic to tackle as we wind down Teen Tech Week 2008. As many of you are no-doubt familiar, a recent IMLS-sponsored Pew Internet Study looked at library use (among other things) and came to what some are calling surprising conclusions.
According to the study results, it appears that libraries indeed remain relevant in this internet age. In fact, the study found more than half of all Americans manged to visit libraries last year. Even more surprisingly, those tech-savvy, web-loving, Wikipedia using Gen-Yers were the biggest library users of all.
To start a discussion on the topic, WebJunction member alatreil asked:
“Would you say that Generation Y (18-30-year-olds) are your library’s heaviest users? What do you think this means for your library—and what does it mean for the nation’s libraries?“
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Please post in the original thread, or here in the blog comments.
This week’s question relates to a topic that may have increasing bearing on our library community: the tech “buy-in.” As technology solutions become easier for library staff to directly implement, I think we could face resistance toward our home-grown solutions from our IT departments.
At least that’s the roadblock member amberdevo seems to be facing with an intern-developed RSS implementation. They have a technology solution and need advice to help them get it to the live stage:
“Our IT dept keeps putting off (since August 07) in setting it up so it can be used. “Security risk — we’re looking at it — we need to have the code verified, blah blah blah” We don’t know what the security risks are, have never been told. Could someone perhaps enlighten me on what the possible security risks may be and how to set things up so there is no security risk.“

You still have a couple hours yet to make a special V-Day post in the Why I love libraries or Why I love my job WebJunction community discussions. We’ve had some great stories shared so far, and would love more.
For those of you with, ahem, other plans this evening—don’t despair. The whole of February (an extra day this year!) is Library Lovers’ Month, You’ve got plenty of time to read and share.
PS — don’t forget to keep tagging content in del.ico.us and flickr with “wjlove.” More on that project at the end of this post.
This Question of the Week embodies one of the best things about WebJunction: Sharing!
Rhastings added Web 2.0 features to his library’s website and thought it would be helpful to see more examples from the community. This particular discussion has been percolating for about a month, but we are sure many more of you are using Web 2.0 in a Library 2.0 context. Rhastings asked the WebJunction community:
“What library websites have you all seen that incorporate the features and applications of Web 2.0 in a really innovative way?”
This month we are trying an experiment with our long-running “I’m Curious George” column. As regular readers know, George’s pieces can often inspire reflection and occasionally lend themselves to group discussion. To facilitate such discussion we are posting the entire column here at BlogJunction. We’re optimistic that the “I’m Curious, George community will engage in a conversation right here in the blog comments. If this proves successful, look for more of our regular features published in BlogJunction. If it bombs, well, this is the web and we are supposed to try new things, right?
by George Needham
Dear George: When I was young, “kindle” was how we started a fire in the fireplace. Now, I see the name has been appropriated for yet another electronic book reader. I’m curious, George: What is it about e-books and e-book readers that make techies salivate? Don’t they realize that the good old paper book is the best possible technology for carrying information?-Passionate about Paper in Poughkeepsie
Dear 3P:
Before I address your question, full disclosure: E-content provider NetLibrary and WebJunction are both part of OCLC, and I work for OCLC. Second, I have a Kindle on order from Amazon for my personal use and to use in the workshops I teach. Finally, everything stated below is my personal opinion and not the opinion of OCLC or NetLibrary or WebJunction or the commissioner of professional football or the studio producing the movie contained herein.
That being said, many years ago I attended one of the first Public Library Association conferences where the keynote speaker was science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. He talked about writing a story in which he needed a high-tech device that was easy to produce on a mass scale, fairly indestructible, and compact, and that could hold vast amounts of information. Then, he said, he realized it had already been invented: it was the book.
(more…)
(Reposting from It’s All Good.)
I started a week’s vacation on Monday. I’m taking some time for a ‘writing retreat’ so that I can make my next deadline (Nov 1 - ahhh!) for the infamous book I’m writing about libraries and community building.
Serendipitous it was then that the new OCLC report on sharing, privacy, trust, and social networking was published online here (in pdf) on Monday. It’s perfect timing because it has such relevance to that ‘other’ work.
But because it also has such absolute relevance to my work at OCLC and with WebJunction, I couldn’t help but pop in here and say ‘hey! you should read this!’ and invite everyone over to my other blog for early thoughts and highlights. As I say over there, there’s more to come, I’m sure, as we dig into all those juicy details.
Back to vacation — very much looking forward to seeing some of you at Internet Librarian next week, BTW. If you’re gonna be there and want to connect, my profile and schedule is up on the IL wiki (as are those of some other WJ friends you may want to connect with).
Wow, what a great group we had on the Accidental Technology Trainer webinar today! Thanks everyone for your great participation. I wished we had all day to keep sharing. At the end of the webinar I invited the participants to help me come up with a Top 10 list of training tips–generated from topics from the webinar and their own experiences. Well, they came up with 47 tips! If you missed the webinar, you can access the archived version (and the other past learning webinars) at: http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=15543. On Friday, I’ll post the questions asked during the webinar, AND my answers. Do you have any additional tips to share or training questions you’d like answered? Just leave a comment on this post
Thanks! Stephanie Gerding, author of The Accidental Technology Trainer
Top 10 Training Tips from Today:
I’m delighted to be the first guest blogger on BlogJunction! We hope you will join us this Wednesday for the next WJ Learning Webinar that will be based on my new book (being released on the same day!), The Accidental Technology Trainer: A Guide for Libraries. We’ll discuss how learning, participation, and retention can be increased in your library training programs!
No matter what type of library you work in or what kind of training you do, join our learning community to share tips and advice.
Compliments of the publisher, InfoToday, we will give away 5 copies of the book during the webinar. You just need to pre-register and then join the webinar to be included in the drawing. Over 100! people have registered, some who are new trainers and some with lots of experience, and I look forward to sharing and learning with everyone.
The Accidental Technology Trainer
October 17, 11 AM – 12 PM PT / 2 – 3 PM ET
Free via WebJunction’s Live Space
Register here (optional)
I’ll be back with more posts to keep the conversation going. Feel free to leave your comments and question here, before or after the session!
More soon,
Stephanie Gerding
Photo outside her home in sunny Phoenix where everything is in bloom
This month we are delighted to feature guest speaker and trainer extraordinaire, Stephanie Gerding in our upcoming Learning Webinar, The Accidental Technology Trainer. Drawing from her many years of experience coordinating training programs in libraries around the country, Stephanie will share advice, point out best practices and address some of the concerns of library staff who find themselves not quite prepared to fill the role of a technology trainer.
While registration for this free webinar is not required, we invite you to enter a drawing to receive a copy of Stephanie’s new book, The Accidental Technology Trainer: A Guide for Libraries, by registering through the WebJunction Calendar of Events. We are looking forward to hosting a fun and informative presentation and hope to *see* you there!
The Accidental Technology Trainer
October 17, 11 AM – 12 PM PT / 2 – 3 PM ET
Free via WebJunction’s Live Space
Register here (optional)
One of the best things about my job is that I have my own librarian. Ok, she’s not ‘my’ librarian. Her name is Tam and she’s more OCLC’s librarian. But it still feels like I have my own personal librarian because I email her questions and she just, like, answers them. Rright away. It’s amazing! I’m such a happy patron right now.
Anyway, one of the projects I’m working on (with my colleagues here at the WJ, including ‘my’ librarian) is gathering some basic info about librarians in the US. Who are we? What do we do? Where do we work? How many of us are there? Frankly, though I don’t often come right out and say it, I’m generally not all that interested in numbers, but this project proved to be pretty interesting and so I thought I’d share some of our findings:
Two ideas emerge from these stats. First, if the bulk of retiring librarians is at the director level, who will the profession promote to those positions? Even if the post-MLIS force keeps up with retirees, will they be ready for the positions they’re asked to fill? Second, if MLIS students are increasingly moving into non-traditional environments instead of taking traditional positions in public, school, academic or other types of libraries, where does that leave us institutionally?
I’d like to append to these facts and figures with an impression that has developed for me through conversation with colleagues over the last several years. Some of my friends in LibraryLand, many of whom are extremely innovative, ambitious, and eager to contribute to the profession, are often struggling in their library jobs. They seem unsupported by their institutions, sometimes specifically by their library directors and senior colleagues. Age, along with tech savvy or advocacy and a shift towards community-based authority or expertise layers in additional divisive factors, sometimes widening the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I have personally benefited from relationships and mentoring with elders in our field - I won’t call them traditionalists! - as well as from very strong institutional support from my employer for my work. But I’m wondering if there’s a way to shift our culture as a profession so that my experiences along these lines are more of a norm, rather than an exception.
And so, how can we bridge these gaps in our daily work? Can we create inter-generational or inter-experiential dialog and (two-way) mentoring so that the library profession, and our institutions, can thrive (not just survive) in the midst of this particular change?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach this. At least two projects in the works so far! Stay tuned…
Join us on August 23, 11:00 am PT/ 2:00 pm ET for You can do it! Practical techniques for supporting public computing. How are your peers meeting the challenges of providing access to public computers? Pooling resources, developing technology plans, and staff training are three things that can help. In this month’s Rural In Focus webinar, we will take a look at The Joy of Computing Cookbook for small and rural libraries at www.maintainitproject.org. Join a lively discussion around best practices that will include three of the libraries who contributed to the cookbook. Bring your success stories as well as your nightmares, and let’s find solutions together! Find information on joining the webinar and see archives of past webinars at Rural In Focus.
I know that competencies are a hot topic when 160 people show up for one of WJ’s Learning Webinars. If you missed Core Competencies for Library Staff, the archive is available for viewing. Launch the recording, type your name in the box and click Enter. (If the login window doesn’t pop up, click the “Participant Login” button.) If you’ve used Wimba on your computer before, there’s no need to run the wizard again; just use the “click here” link. The movable table of contents window allows you to jump forward and back through the slides.
Many thanks again to Sarah and Karen for sharing their expertise!
TechAtlas is a free tool that libraries can use for technology planning and technology management. We think it’s pretty cool software and we’re excited that so many libraries are using it (you can too, http://webjunction.techatlas.org). One of the features in TechAtlas is that libraries can maintain an inventory of the equipment that they own. And because we like number crunching and data analyzing, we made a graph to look at how libraries have changed operating systems on their computers over the past 5 years*.
If you love looking at data, you can look at the actual percentages broken down by year.
Happy Retirement: Windows 95/98 and NT have been mostly retired, but there a few hanging on.
New Kid on the Block: Windows Vista is starting to make an appearance in the library scene, which is great. Libraries are moving ahead with new technology and keeping current.
What’s your library’s plan for upgrading and replacing equipment? Is Vista in your future? Check out WebJunction’s forum on Operating Systems if you have questions or want to know what people are talking about.
*We looked at data from 4,756 libraries and over 67,000 computers.
TechSoup’s MaintainIT Project has published their much-anticipated Joy of Computing Cookbook, a wonderful collection of resources for librarians charged with looking after public computers. While prepared specifically for those working in small and rural libraries, the content of this “cookbook” is so rich that anyone supporting public computing services in any type of library will be sure to find something of value.
Just be cautious about taking the cookbook metaphor too far - my own experiments with the edibility of computer hardware have produced disappointing results…
Would you like to see your own training tips and insights printed in a book? If you do technology training in your library, please spend a few minutes completing a quick survey.
Your responses may be used in an upcoming book, The Accidental Technology Trainer: A Library Guide, which is being written by Stephanie Gerding, co-author of the Library Grants blog and Grants for Libraries.