Great video
“A screen that doesn’t ship with a mouse is broken. Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.” -- Clay Shirky @ Web 2.0 Expo, http://blip.tv/file/855937/
Candy@GSLIS
 | Content associated with the teaching activities of Candy Schwartz, Professor at the Graduate School of Library & Information Science, Simmons College. |
May 14, 2008
May 01, 2008
Librarian dress-up
You have to see this - http://librariandressup.com/index.htm
April 25, 2008
Observations
Student groups in the core organization class explored how a large bookstore and a large public library handle an assigned topical area (e.g., sports, handicrafts, cookery). Each group made a report, and then each student commented on other reports. I enjoyed this comment, and it shows why I use this assignment. The student is Stephen Stose, and the name of the library has been removed.
------------ comment by Stephen:
Yes, I also enjoyed reading the distinction between precision browsing and precision searching. I have always thought that libraries should become, nevertheless, more "browsable" and bookstores more "searchable". …. Libraries should guard the silence, but not at the expense of user experience. This may be to suggest that librarians need to relax a bit, open up a coffee shop inside (not Starbucks, please), and use their lobby as public space (if it is, where is the public?), not as space observed by the panoptican desk of the shhshing librarian (how I felt in XXX PL, waiting). Here we have it: the "public" turned "private". I suppose, bookstores, on the other hand, require the opposite extreme. Here we have the "private" turned overwhelmingly "public", almost as if there is nothing else to do in Boston these days other than browse a bookstore-coffee shop with one's kids and friends, as a way to spend the day. It is a nice way to spend the afternoon, but often today it seems done, let me suggest, in the name of "style", which bookstores seem happy to promote. A noisy bookstore on Saturday morning, making lots of money at the same time; it is the new public space, and few people consider spending the same day at the public library, perhaps due to the constrictions these old "public" dinosaurs place on the public. Indeed, after my experience in XXX PL, I also would prefer the Harvard Bookstore or Coop, where there is at least life. And if I really was interested in precise searching, I probably would go to the much larger BPL downtown. The conclusion, libraries need to adapt to the public spirit a bit more, open their doors, let their hair down, and serve wine and coffee where artists and intellectuals and families can feel comfortable "being" and also browsing. Few families really are interested in precise searching, and the intellectuals and artists at the bookstores, really, could use a bit more of that.
March 12, 2008
Going home
Tomorrow I will be going up to Montreal to give a talk at McGill, my alma mater for my master's degree. I am quite excited. Of course, I have been going to Montreal a couple of times a year ever since we moved to Boston, but it's been a while since I did anything official at McGill. I was checking out the library school's Web pages today, and I have to say that the curriculum has changed a great deal since 1974 (I would hope so). They have some very cool-sounding courses. I will be back on Monday.
October 22, 2007
From Milwaukee
We have been having a fun but hectic time at ASIST. Last night the Simmons students and the New England Chapter went to dinner with the LA students and chapter, to celebrate our shared awards (chapters of the year and student chapters of the year). Here's our own Caryn Anderson making a toast.
There are more pictures in flickr, in the Simmons ASIS&T flickr account here.
September 25, 2007
Quandary
Does anybody out there know a used CD store would welcome old LPs? I don't want to sell them - I just don't want to dump them in the garbage. Mostly 60s-70s rock, some bluegrass, jazz, and classical.
August 26, 2007
I'm back
I am back from vacation - and have the photos to prove it (see the Sidmouth and Glasgow sets in flickr). Also, I have moved up one floor, along with Allen Smith and several staff members (see GSLIS expands). My new office is P-310C - it's directly above my old office, and looks much the same.
It's taken me a while to dig out from under, so don't go looking for new course content until I announce it here. LIS 462 will be pilot testing Vista 4, and 415 will be doing something different as well.
Drop in to the new digs and say hello.
I'm back
I am back from vacation - and have the photos to prove it (see the Sidmouth and Glasgow sets in flickr). Also, I have moved up one floor, along with Allen Smith and several staff members (see GSLIS expands). My new office is C-310C - it's directly above my old office, and looks much the same.
It's taken me a while to dig out from under, so don't go looking for new course content until I announce it here. LIS 462 will be pilot testing Vista 4, and 415 will be doing something different as well.
Drop in to the new digs and say hello.
July 09, 2007
Cool article in yesterday's NYT
A hipper crowd of shushers (although I take exception to the implication that we weren't hip in the 70s).
April 19, 2007
Scriblio meeting
Great ASIS&T meeting with Casey Bisson and his associate (whose name I never caught), talking about using Scriblio, a WordPress enabled OPAC. Casey has been blogging about (and winning awards for) his work at Maison Bisson for a while now - it was a treat to see him in person, and very inspiring. You can see Scriblio in action at Plymouth State's Lamson Library, and also at a small public library, Cook Memorial Library, in Tamworth, NH.
April 10, 2007
Library Thing
Library Thing has developed Library Thing for Libraries, a tie-in between LT and the OPAC. If you work at a forward-looking library, send this notice to your director - LT is looking for public library participants. Go Tim!
March 08, 2007
February 21, 2007
My other life
I posted a bunch of pictures from my January jaunt to Glasgow - if you are interested in Celtic music you might enjoy these - http://www.flickr.com/photos/candy-s/sets/72157594541571584/ - and if you just want to see some shots of the Kelvingrove Museum and some fun things around Glasgow, they are here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/candy-s/sets/72157594541430210/. I also updated Little Dig 3 with some construction photos - the set is organized chronologically, so you would want to look towards the end for the latest - http://www.flickr.com/photos/candy-s/sets/72157594168985567/.
February 13, 2007
Fun - video
Check this out (tip of the hat to Ellen Wilson for alerting me): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td922l0NoDQ
December 28, 2006
Slanty design
I just read an interesting piece on "slanty design" by Russell Beale, in the latest issue of Communications of the ACM. If you are interested in usability, you might enjoy this. The January issue isn't online yet in public view, but if you have access to Simmons e-resources, the DOI is:
http://0-doi.acm.org.library.simmons.edu:80/10.1145/1188913.1188934
December 04, 2006
New 3x5 Xmas thingies
Linda Watkins and Em Claire Knowles now have a range of gift bags, gift tags, and Christmas cards, all based on 3x5 cards. These are wonderful objects for any bibliophile. If you are interested, contact either of them. As always, the proceeds go the the Farragut Public School Library in the Fenway for the purchase of new books.
October 08, 2006
Terry Pratchett
If you are a Terry Practhcett fan, e-mail me.
October 06, 2006
Robot librarians
While there is something a bit wierd (not sure why) about linking to a blog from another class - here is something cool from a student in Caryn's LIS 488.
October 04, 2006
Job description
I came across this in a job description today:
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: MLS; at least 3 years of experience ...; must be able to work both independently and collaboratively; must be able to occasionally lift and/or move up to 30 pounds; must be able to tolerate normal library allergens.
Hey - it's good to be up front.
October 03, 2006
NEASIST Embedded library meeting - LibraryThing
The third speaker was Tim Spalding [corrected from Peter - see his comment - my mind must have been wandering at the time, inventor of LibraryThing. He exsplained how it came about, how it works, spent at least 15 minutes slagging off on LCSH (but mainly for fiction, which is a bit unfair), and a very short time on the downsides of tagging. I do admire LibraryThing, and I also like that it is shaking up libraries a bit. He really doesn't think it will replace OPACs, and he is very into partnering with libraries.
NEASIST Embedded library meeting - LibX
Annette Bailey & Godmar Back talked about LibX, their Firefox browser extension which brings library presence to a user's normal search space (what Lorcan Dempsey calls the ueser's "webflow"). They looked at similar projects (such as FASTJAck, HALbar, Library Lookup, and Wag the Dog), but found they were either system specific or had limited functionality. They used Firefox because it is easier to create extensions for Firefox than for IE - all you need is a bit of Javascript and some XML knowledge. Also, Firefox pushes updates to extensions easily.
NEASIST Embedded library meeting - Hennig
I am at the "Embedded library" meeting of the New England Chapter of ASIST&T. The speaker right now is Nicole Hennig, MIT Library webmistress and general tecchie cool woman (and our alum). She spearheaded an effort to find out how MIT students look for information (they used "keep a photo-journal" methods). Turns out (surprise) that almost all of them use primarily Google and ts various sub-applications (such as Scholar), plus Wikipedia, and a few favourite resources. They virtually ignore the library and its wide array of resources.
Continue reading "NEASIST Embedded library meeting - Hennig" »
September 02, 2006
How I spent my summer vacation
I put some pictures in flickr from the two music festivals I went to in August - Folkweek in Sidmouth, Devon, England, and The World Fleadh in Ballybunion, County Kerry, Ireland.
September 01, 2006
Thinking ahead
I would normally not countenance anything resembling advertising, but these are just too cool. Linda Watkins and Em Claire Knowles have created gift tags (or bookmarks) from carefully selected 3x5 cards. Contact them to buy some in time for the December holidays (5 for $3).
August 24, 2006
Back from holiday
I am back from two and a half weeks of holiday (I will post pictures later). I am now working on course content (and a whole bunch of other things). Don't bother checking for Fall stuff on the Web or VISTA yet.
July 18, 2006
Me and LibraryThing
So I finally got around to entering some of my library into LibraryThing on Saturday night. I started with the basic Tolkien stuff. You can import MARC records from LC and many other libraries, how cool. Suddenly it's 3am, and why? Because I have been busy finding the right book covers and, more pathetically, correcting the cataloging (how did these get to be MARC records - there's suppposed to be a space after the semicolon - there's no such word as "illus." - the maps are col. maps). So I only got 23 things entered, but boy it was fun. You can take the cataloguer out of the back room but ...