Phish Festival 8 - Photomation

Most comfortable festival experience EVER. We were camped very close to the often cleaned johns, had plenty of water at convenient refilling stations, were a short walk to the concert field, and most refreshing of all, SHOWERS! It was awesome. Perfect venue. I can't wait to do it again.

For a taste of the experience, check out Michael Marantz's animation of Festival 8. It is created using still shots and music from the festival.

Phish - Festival 8 (long cut) from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

Links between information and emotion (and reference service)

Here is an interesting bit of information that made me think of a book I once read.

The bit:
More proof that emotion is a powerful force in making sense of information

The book:
Information and Emotion
The Emergent Affective Paradigm in Information Behavior Research and Theory
My review:
http://readingundeterred.blogspot.com/2008/04/information-and-emotion-emergent.html

As someone who provides information for a living, I have seen clearly how emotion can make or break someone. Time and again, I have witnessed a pinched-faced, nervous ball of a human being asking for information and being disappointed, perplexed and annoyed at the result. I have also seen calm and open-minded people asking for the very same information and being thankful, placated and intrigued by the result. I learned early in the profession that a librarian should not take on the negative emotions of their customers, but this is easier said than done. All too clearly I recall missing key pieces of information because I was working with a high-anxiety, ultra-intense person. As soon as they left, the missing piece was right there under my nose. Over time I've learned to cool it down and hopefully cool them down. But let's face it, there are those that no matter what you offer, it is still not the answer they were looking/hoping for. And these souls, I'm sad to say, get sub-standard service. Not because I don't want to give them more, but because they either don't give me time to get it right or they won't hear what I'm saying.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Staff Day at the Library 2009

This year for Staff Training and Development Day, we had a slew of speakers. The afternoon speakers focused on health. We had a guy from the shoe store tell us all about shoes, a guy from the outdoors store tell us about the plethora of outdoor places and activities in the Spokane area, and an eye doctor (I don't know what he talked about - I ended up in a side conversation about libraryland).

Usually, staff days tend to have motivational speakers that try to get employees pumped up about how great they are and what a wonderful place they work. Choose your attitude sort of stuff. I like motivational speakers. But this year I was happily surprised that our keynote speaker, Michael Porter, was librarian that could speak to us about libraries and more specifically about technology. He said a lot of interesting things, and while I wished he delved more deeply into the implications of using (or not using) technology and how the broader library community can get involved in the digital milieu, I did get a lot out of presentation.

Some of the highlights I came away with were:
Get a camera
Get with social networking, particularly facebook and flickr
Should we delve into the social networking arena, we will need to commit to updating it and creating a presence (be reliable, be responsive, be available)
Create, foster, nurture partnerships
If libraries do not stake their claim in the digital realm, it will move on without us - we will lose leverage; we have expertise in organizing and providing information, regardless of format

Here are my notes:

Our Future Library: Evolved, Even More Practical, Everywhere and Different
Michael Porter

Libraries = content + community

photos
- get cameras
- record memories – makes people feel good

What makes you love your library?
- people
- help
- books
- internet
- needs met

technology
- libraries are well-placed in community to take advantage of technology

fidelity
- defines what we are as institutions
- things that used to be sci-fi aren’t any more

library 101
- whole new set of basics
- find ways to engage the technology

-technology innovations are jumping exponentially every year – what does this do for libraries?

What do we adopt?
What’s part of our mission and vision?

- we are getting leapfrogged by for-profit companies (i.e. facebook)
- we need to jump onto their platform to compete with them
- we could get usurped if we’re not careful and adapt to the changes – find new ways to provide access to content
- we have a window of opportunity we need to plan for and we need to talk about

- what we do in libraries that doesn’t have to do with technology is not matching up with what we do that has to do with technology (we’re good at interacting with community but not good at the software side)

- digital content – libraries don’t have a platform to circulate
- we don’t own or have control over it

- articulate what you do well and say it

- take blinders off when we look at what we offer on the web
- what could we try?

Teaching today's youth - Video food for thought

I ran across two videos recently about teaching today's teens. The first is an interview with some teens about their learning styles and preferred methods of learning. Quite fascinating. The second one is a music video about the need for today's kids to have teachers that are responsive to changing learning styles. Also, the song mentions things such as technological barriers to allowing children to reach their full potential in school.

When I was in school, I don't think I gave much thought to how my teachers were teaching me. Of course having a disinterested and lethargic teacher makes it glaringly clear what you don't want your teacher to be, but I didn't think much about how I wanted to be taught. I just accepted what was given to me and tried my best to succeed.

Today's teens seem to have more ideas about how they want to learn and what they expect from their teachers. I think this is a great thing as long as the teachers are willing to incorporate these kids' ideas into their curriculum. It takes a great teacher to let their ego go and accept input. Too often as a student I felt pitted against certain teachers; they seemed unable to take their students' perceptions and ideas seriously. Or some listened but couldn't do much to change the way things were, stifled as they were by time and administration constraints. It is interesting to see the face of education evolve. We'll see what happens next.

Emotionally intelligent signs

I really enjoyed this short video presented the Pechu Kucha way (20 slides every 20 seconds). It came at a great time for me, seeing as I have spent the last few weeks wandering the nonfiction stacks trying to figure out where signs should go. Great information and food for thought in library land - the place of abounding signs. Which also gives me thought about whether all of the signs are truly necessary. I wonder how many signs there are that no one looks at through no fault of their own. Perhaps the signs aren't attractive or attention-getting or maybe there are too many signs together that they all blur into each other.

Just for fun, I did a quick ProQuest search to see what's new in signs and sign design. There is some good stuff out there. Check out
Berke, J. & Berke, C. (2009). Wayfinding: Part of the sign landscape. Sign Builder Illustrated, 23(167). Retrieved August 20, 2009, from ProQuest database.
(I haven't built a reference list citation in a while, glad to see I still got it.)

More about Twitter hashtags

Piggy-backing on my earlier post and my fascination with #hashtags, I read a short but sweet piece in Library Journal by Josh Hadro. It seems he has similar concerns about Twitter and conference tweets. Read his thoughts here.

Official hashtags? - ALA Annual Conference

So now that I've come to realize the utility of Twitter, I thought I would belatedly check in on the ALA conference (quite late). What I noticed right away was the use of both #ala2009 and #ala09 hashtags. So my next thought was which hashtag was the official one? This line of thinking led me to a couple of things. First, the overwhelming majority use the #ala2009 hashtag (Twittering Librarians Confront Hashtagging). Although the ALA website does not make it explicit which hashtag to use, the ALALibrary twitter account uses #ala2009. I also ran across an article on Phil Bradley's weblog, Where librarians and the internet meet: internet searching, Web 2.0 resources, search engines and their development. His main point was that hashtags should be as small as possible and not be used as a descriptor, just as a locator. He makes some excellent points.

The one thing I'd like to add to the discussion: it would be nice if ALA and possibly even the divisions chose an official hashtag and post them somewhere centralized on the main website. I know this may seem anathema to the organic organization of Twitter, but it sure would help cut down on some of the confusion and the need to hashtag twice for the same exact thing.