library+instruction+technology

• librarywriting
  Sheila Webber’s companion wiki from her Lilac 2007presentation “Writing for publication”.
  (tags: writing research articles library wiki)
• Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007
  Pew longitudinal study and the trends are not in the Republicans favor.
  (tags: culture pew research statistics politics survey polls)
• Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software
  New book (download free PDF) from MIT on open source. Topics include: motivation, economics, business models, software development process and tools, law, and community.
  (tags: books open_source reading)
• eigenfactor.org – ranking and mapping scientific journals
  Found via Science Library Pad, this research project provides free impact factor data. They are “evaluating the influence of scholarly periodicals and for mapping the structure of academic research.”
  (tags: research articles journals impact_factor ranking)
• Getting in the Flow: CIC Library Conference
  Blog from the CIC 2007 conference with session write ups and links to presentations.
  (tags: cic blog conference libraries)

My second (and last) radio show this semester is Sunday night. I'll be playing my favorite 80s songs from 7 to 9 p.m. Yeah, I'm old enough to have heard some of these on the radio in high school and college (sigh).

The songs I have picked out so far include:

• Animotion: Obsession 
• Bananarama: Cruel Summer and Venus 
• Blondie: Rapture
• Bronski Beat: Smalltown Boy
• Colourbox: Pump Up the Volume 
• Dead or Alive: You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)
• Depeche Mode: People are People
• Dexy's Midnight Runners: Come on Eileen 
• Duran Duran: Hungry Like the Wolf and Reflex
• Gloria Estefan: Rhythm is Gonna Get You
• Eurythmics: Here Comes the Rain Again
• Falco: Rock Me Amadeus [aka Eat Me Hot Potatoes to one of my friends from high school]
• Heart: Never
• Howard Jones: Things Can Only Get Better
• Human League: Don't You Want Me
• Information Society: What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy) [You Go Spock!]
• Madness: Our House
• Murray Head: One Night in Bangkok
• New Order: True Faith and Blue Monday
• Pet Shop Boys: West End Girls
• Tears for Fears: Shout
• T'Pau: Heart and Soul
• 'Til Tuesday: Voices Carry
• Soft Cell: Tainted Love
• Kim Wilde: You Keep Me Hangin' On

I've played some of these last semester (and summer), so you'll just have to listen to them again. I considered including Relax (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and Peek-a-Boo (Siouxsie and the Banshees), but thought it was best to avoid angry calls to the FCC.

I'm not attending ODCE this year since I'm going to ACRL in three weeks. People are starting to post to the conference blog. Chad Boeninger is blogging the sessions he is attending. Other blog posts are also starting to show up on Technorati. It's almost like being there…

I read the 2007 Newbery Medal winner, The Higher Power of Lucky, this weekend. I think the amount of press surrounding the controversy of a single "adult word" is unfortunate. It is a well written book. I hope parents take the time to read the book and decide if it is appropriate for their children.

The family currently has around 75 copies. Our copy came out of processing last week. Any of the sibs, cousins, or extended family members are more than welcome to borrow it. 

• Create instant online whiteboards with Skrbl
  Quick and easy online whiteboard tool. Could be useful during IM chats.
  (tags: collaboration whiteboards tools)
• Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
  Search the “Presidential writings, addresses, and remarks of a public nature could be made available” for George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
  (tags: government research President united_states)
• Tagging Play
  Article on Pew’s December tagging report including an interview with David Weinberger who contrasts tagging with Dewey Decimal and discusses implications.
  (tags: tagging research folksonomies article library2.0 Pew reports statistics taxonomy trends web2.0)
• Animated Tutorial Sharing Project
  Via ILI-L, repository of open source database tutorials. Anyone can use and contribute.
  (tags: tutorials library learning_objects open_source database tools library_instruction)
• The Value of Book Reviews
  Iris shares her experience teaching how to use book reviews to a class.
  (tags: books reviews library_instruction best_practice)
• Life-Long Computer Skills
  Jakob Nielsen suggests that the focus should be on teaching “deep, strategic computer insights” not application specific tasks. Via Library Stuff.
  (tags: article information_literacy teaching usability search learning)
• Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation
  Paper about the intersection of social networks and libraries. By R. David Lankes, Joanne Silverstein, Scott Nicholson from the Information Institute of Syracuse.
  (tags: library2.0 libraries networks research collaboration article)

My tenure at marchFIRST's Pittsburgh office was very short. I left my knowledge management job at Deloitte to join marchFIRST in November 2000. The siren song of more money and stock options was to great to resist.  Plus, I was so over flying (US Scare begins with You) around the country for work.

I was hired in as a Business Analyst to work with the data warehousing team.  Little did I know I was boarding a sinking ship. I was in the third round of layoffs at the end of January 2001. On the bright side I did get a decent severance package. I also had plenty of pretty business cards to use as bookmarks for the rest of my life.

marchFIRST was an internet consulting company that rode the dot.com tidal wave until it crashed along with the dot.com bubble of 2000-2001. It was the merged entity of Whittman Hart and US Web/CKS. It was so named because the merger closed on…March 1…how clever.

The positive side of my marchFIRST story is that it redirected me back towards libraries. I had original moved to Pittsburgh in 1993 to get my MLIS from Pitt. I just took a 10 year detour via corporate America.

<snarky comment>I'm amused by those in the biblioblogosphere "beating the drum" about the Clue Train Manifesto. People, where were you in 1999 when it first came out and why didn't you start your drum beat then?</snarky comment>

The human desire to be first.

Put your best idea forward.

Move minds.

Lead in ways you never dreamed possible.