23 Things on a Stick - Round 2

23 Things on a Stick is well into the Round 2 phase. New participatns (or participants who began in Round 1 and wish to continue) have until Sept 15 to register their blog and work through this interesting, exciting, and rewarding “personal learning experience”. Learn about blogs, RSS feeds, Twitter, Zoho, and many more tools.  View the participants Newsletter (vol 2no1 - June 19) and read the new blogs posted by NLLN participants.   

ELM Portal (www.elm4you.org) changes

The ELM Portal — conveniently found at www. elm4you.org — contains all of the resources of the Electronic Library for Minnesota: those rich information sources ranging from research journals to newspapers to e-books and MORE.

For the past 5 months, Minnesota residents have been able to freely access all these resources if they were using a Minnesota internet service provider (ISP). Due to contractractual agreements with EBSCO, the portal has been slightly modified. To access the EBSCO resources it will be necessary to have a public library card. This change will not affect other ELM resources — only EBSCO . All of ELM will still be  accessible in the regular way in your academic, public, and school libraries, as well as on the MnLINK gateway.

Be sure to use your Electronic Library for Minnesota for your information needs!

Maintain IT’s Spotlight is on Bemidji Public Library - KRL

The Maintain IT’s Spotlight is on the Kitchigami Regional Library and Bemidji branch manager,  Paul Ericsson.  Read how this region is solving it’s tech support for public computers in their 10 branch libraries by having a ”BRAT” in each branch.  (A BRAT is a “BRanch Area Tech). You can read the whole report here and learn their successful way to deal with an age-old problem.

But - this is not the only library which is sharing their ways of supporting public access computing and public access computers in libraries. Learn more about this grassroots community growing under the encouragement of the MaintainIT Project.

The MaintainIT Project is a three-year project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We gather stories from public libraries on how they support public computers and publish their tips and techniques in Cookbooks and articles, available for FREE on the project web site. The Project works with libraries throughout the U.S. and Canada, sharing stories from the field so librarians can learn from each other.”

Take some time to explore this tremendous resource and get cooking with the cookbooks, webinars, spotlight, and more!

Sirsi Dynix Institute

The Sirsi-Dynix Institute is a great place to keep up with the leading edge in thinking, best practices, and new technology.  Today I attended the webcast presentation by Marshall Breeding where he takes a look at where we are headed as Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 evolve into Library 3.0.  It was a stimulating  consideration of how we have embraced the tools and functionality of Web 2.0, and how we can move toward the next stage of Library 3.0 in a continuous, but purposeful way.

 The live webinar is done, but the Event Archive of this and past webinars allows you to view them at your own convenience.  It is worth the visit.

Title: Beyond Web 2.0: Taking the social read-write Web to the enterprise level
Over the last few years, many libraries have eagerly embraced Web 2.0 technologies–blogs, wikis, and social engagement with patrons have become commonplace. This approach to the Web can no longer be considered new and cutting-edge. Change on the Web move along at a fast pace. It’s time to consider what comes next. Breeding will give his view of how libraries can take Web 2.0 technologies to the next level and integrate them into their core automation infrastructure to better support their strategic missions. Today’s Web 2.0 technologies have been implemented mostly through informal processes. As the Web 2.0-inspired technologies mature, they need to become more central to a library’s strategic mission and become integrated into its fundamental infrastructure. Tune in for Marshall Breeding’s view of life beyond Web 2.0.

LJ Webcast on teen services

 

Yesterday I watched this webcast from Library Journal. If you missed it, an archived version of the webcast is available at the link below.  I found it very interesting, particularly the segment on gaming in libraries. It was interesting to know more about the working definitions of “games” and “gaming” and how they differ. Teen Spirit in the Library: Best Practices in YA and Teen Services Webcast

The original event was broadcast on:

Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Time: 2:00 PM EDT

Duration: 60-minutes  Archive of this session is found at:

 

http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=109644&s=1&k=986D7A4F569E1351500B87B745C319FF

Catching up #2 — NLLN Annual Meeting

Also due to severe weather, the NLLN Annual Meeting scheduled for Saturday, April 26, at Thumper Pond had to be cancelled and will be re-scheduled in early May.  Like Spotlight, we knew it was coming but ended up with a storm of such magnitude that we were forced to cancel the Saturday events on Friday evening.

Although the Board meeting will be immediately re-scheduled, the TechnoFit workshop with Brenda Hough will be re-scheduled at a time and location to be announced. Probably early May. We hope that even more people will be able to attend than had registered for the original event.  Brenda has prepared an important and fun experience for us on how to keep up with technology, how to understand our own personal learning styles, and tools we can use to stay “technofit”. In addition, we have special gifts for all participants and prizes for a drawing.  Watch for the announcement of the re-scheduled event. 

Catching up– Spotlight on Books

A series of events — and so many of them weather related — have kept me from posting to this blog. The first catch-up post relates to Spotlight on Books, April 11-12, 2008.

The Spotlight on Books Conference: Decades of Great Reading  was held as announced, but presented major challenges for everyone. For us, it was mainly a question of getting authors, presenters, and participants there safely.  A blizzard forecast to begin on Thursday evening prompted a number of people to come early and for Sugar Lake Lodge to offer special rates, and meals, for early arrivals . All evening long, people literally “drifted in” as the storm began to get serious. Gusty wind and blowing snow, as well as poor road surfaces, made for challenges no matter what direction you were coming from. These conditions lasted through all of Friday and into Saturday morning.

Jim Trelease, Friday’s presenter, got there on Thursday evening and his two presentations were wonderful. Mary Casanova and Debra Frasier also blew in on Friday as events they were scheduled to hold were cancelled. DJ MacHale got to Minneapolis without a problem, but flights into Duluth, Hibbing, and Bemidji were all cancelled so he grabbed a shuttle to Duluth, spent the night there, and arrived at Sugar Lake Lodge on Saturday morning in time for the day’s events. His luggage didn’t quite catch up with him until he was ready to return to California, but he was a good sport about all the improvisations that took place and was a charming presenter.

Though our presenters all got there, and 72 registered participants arrived, and we had a terrific conference, some of the Sugar Lake Lodge staff were unable to get in to work and the food truck making deliveries was unable to get through. The staff and chefs at Sugar Lake Lodge were undaunted by this, however, and provided us with scrumptious meals and outstanding service.

Authors, book displays, showcase events, book sales, book signing, and lots of networking made this a wonderful conference. We were sorry that many could not make it, but were glad that a majority of our registrants did get there and all our presenters provided a memorable Conference.

We hope that NEXT year will go off — April 3-4, 2009 –without any dramatic weather!  We will hope for weather similar to the first year we were at Sugar Lake Lodge where we were able to enjoy the deck for after dinner dessert!

100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (both for Mac and Win) | MakeUseOf.com

100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (both for Mac and Win) | MakeUseOf.com 

If you have a flash drive or PDA and you only use it for really basic stuff — like copying files from computer for use on another — well check out all the free software that is available as portable applications. Here are 100 free applications that you can use to increase your productivity, keep your data private, make everything portable, and keep your “stuff” with you as you move in the world and from computer to computer. It’s pretty amazing stuff!

Up close photography

A very brief tutorial on up-close photography with your digital camera is found on the LifeHacker blog.

I often have my digital camera with me, but find that I don’t use all the options available to me. This quick little tutorial on using the macros is a quick way to refresh your memory on how to take very close-up pictures of things that catch your eye. A great way to create interesting pictures instead of boring same-old, same-old!

Ann Walker Smalley

Ann Walker Smalley

Originally uploaded by NLLN.

Minnesota Multitype Library System Directors did 2 sessions on “23 Things on a Stick: A Library Learning 2.0 Project” at the MEMO Midwinter Conference. It was very popular and got a lot people launched! Ann Walker Smalley, project lead, did a great job of presenting this material to an eager audience.