What a blast the new Computers in Libaries 2007 Infotubey Awards were. You can view the awards ceremony powerpoint with links to the winning library productions. And now you can see the event captured by David Lee King in a great YouTube video. You can feel how the audience enjoyed the event through their laughter and participation. Think about productions you can create for next year’s InfoTubey Awards. One of the winners, McCracken County Public Library, has already done a TV promo for their new YouTube videos. Let me know if you want to see it, I can send it to you — it’s great!
People have been telling me how useful they found 2 concepts I discussed at CIL recently. Credit for these concepts needs to go where credit is due.
The Star Model is from Jay Galbraith’s brilliant work on 
Designing Organizations (I’m including the link to Amazon). His books and articles on how to structure org charts and, most importantly, how people work together, are indispensable for any one working in this area; my copies are well worn! This isn’t doing it justice, but the star model emphasizes that an organization’s strategy, structure, processes, people (skills & attitudes), and rewards are inter-related and interdependant.
85/15 is a concept discussed by consultant & prolific author Jim Clemmer . As Jim says in Firing on all Cylinders, the root of about 85% of problems/defects in an organization can be traced 
back to an organization’s processes or infrastructure; only 15% of problems/defects are caused by employees who don’t care or who slip up. Clemmer sites Deming & Juran’s work on quality– definitely worth looking up when you are working on org charts.
Rebecca and I have been playing around a bunch with Facebook and have quite a few friends and colleagues that we connect with there. Definitely an interesting space. I’m looking forward to
Aaron Schmidt’s presentation next week, Tuesday, May 1st, 3-4pm ET (12-1am PT). It’s part of the
Education Institute’s Tech Tuesdays: Talking with Techies Series —
Facebook and MySpace: Pros and Cons for Libraries, a one hour audio conference. Here’s what he’s covering:
Much has been written about the negative aspects of Facebook and MySpace. But are these technologies useful to libraries? Can you use these new social computing tools to create and cement your on-line presence within your community whether you are a public, academic, or school library? Filled with practical examples of libraries utilizing these techniques, this workshop debates the use of new technologies and provides lots of easy to implement ideas for using them within your environment.
Want to Beta test a new web platform for self-exploration and discovery “that helps you plan, play and progress in every area of life”? Check out a new start-up, Inpowr, that was included in Launch Pad Participant at the Web 2.0 Expo at Moscone in San Francisco last week. A colleague from Montreal, Michel Chioini works with the company who developed Inpowr, Humanix Technologies.
The morning keynote at CIL 2007 by
John Van Oudenaren, Senior Advisor,
World Digital Library (WDL) Initiative,
Library of Congress, ended with a great
video of what we might expect down the road. He talked about the initiation of the initiative in 2005, the $3 million support from
Google to create a plan for the WDL, the prototype to be unveiled later this year and the completion of the WDL plan in September 2008. Imgine being able to search world cultural assets in 7 languages and interacting with the WDL in an engaging way. Keep tuned for the plan which is thinking big!
Check out the great
sketch of Rebecca on Organization 2.0! What a partner! Love the finger. Wonderful work,
Derik Badman. He is a librarian who blogs mostly about comics and literary constraint, but he also does a weekly webcomic called “Maroon”.
View Lee’s presentation here.
Fabulous to see the exitement of Michelle MacLean, first time CIL speaker and librarian from Australia here in DC. Great to meet here and see her enthusiam as she meets many of the people she has only known online. She blogged about Ken Roberts, CEO, Hamilton Public Library and his talk about Building Communities, Connections & Strategies.
Librarians have long laughed about the fact that we are “hunters”; we truly enjoy searching — we thrill at the ‘hunt’ for answers. We’re curious to see where the hunt leads us.
Library 2.0 means we need to use our curiousity in new ways — in playing games just to see what they’re like; in seeking out “active virtual worlds” like kaneva or vios. Curiousity in the 2.0 world doesn’t kill the cat, it enriches the cat’s perspective and perception. Rather than asking “why would we be interested in that?” we now ask “how we can use that? what else is like that? what’s that mean for us as service providers?”
