At the New Albany–Floyd County (Ind.) Public Library, where I work, we have a teen volunteer program that starts at age 11. We get a high volume of requests for volunteer hours because of a service requirement at a nearby middle school. We’re one of the only games in town for these kids, many of … Continue reading Helping Hands
My mom was the first of many inspirations in my professional life. She took a job at our smallish public library when I was a kid. I started hanging around there, which led to helping out, shelving, and eventually working the desk, and I never really left. She and my dad worked very hard to … Continue reading The Last Story
Most likely your library still has traditional customers who ask questions at the reference desk and check out physical books. You also have a new breed of library customer who brings in any number of electronic devices and expects those devices to work with your library’s technology. They want to plug into your public computers. … Continue reading Futureproofing Your Library
littleBits Code Kit Little Bits has been used in classrooms and makerspaces for years as a platform for building and experimenting with electronics. The Code Kit, released in summer 2017, is its first education-oriented kit to incorporate simple coding into projects. The kit introduces an LED matrix and a “codeBit” to the littleBits collection of … Continue reading Coding for Fun
Building or renovating a library is often only cursorily covered. The Practical Handbook of Library Architecture: Creating Building Spaces That Work, by Fred Schlipf and John A. Moorman, is long overdue. Its functional predecessor, Planning Academic and Research Library Buildings, third edition, by Philip D. Leighton and David C. Weber (ALA Editions, 1999), answers many … Continue reading Learning Outside the Box
We must all fight the closing of school libraries, the reductions in professional staffing, the erosion of budgets for resources and technology, and the consequent weakening of the librarian–teacher partnership in the classroom. We must advocate for the federal funding that supports network access in schools. We must continue to document and demonstrate the powerful … Continue reading Fight for School Libraries
In social media, bots collect information that might be of interest to users by crawling the internet for specific information and sharing it on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Bots use keywords and hashtags in their searches. Some social bots were developed to behave like a human—using emojis in their posts, only posting at reasonable … Continue reading Social Media Bots
For community-based or other participatory archive models, digital technologies offer a way to meaningfully engage with materials. Yet what good is a digital archive if the community does not have internet available? How can an individual fully participate in using or shaping digital heritage resources if they do not have the computer skills, or even … Continue reading What Is Access without Equity?
In K–12 and academic libraries, this is becoming increasingly possible with learning analytics systems that aggregate student data to make trends visible. The systems also allow advisors, instructors, and other stakeholders to use the trend data to identify a student at risk based on specific characteristics or behaviors. They allow educators to intervene, often before … Continue reading We Can, But Should We?
Let me start then by expressing profound gratitude to the members of the search committee. I know several of them—fine, clearheaded, and experienced people all—and I also know they must have done yeoman’s work. These tasks are important, time-consuming, and often with little reward other than self-satisfaction because you can’t tell anybody what’s going on. … Continue reading Degree or Not Degree
As we observe Preservation Week (April 22–26), keep in mind that even our youngest students are eager to hear about cultural and historic preservation from the people most invested in it. Our learners realize that everybody has a story and that these stories make a difference. My own preservation journey with 3rd graders at Pilot … Continue reading To Preserve and Protect
The afterword in Introduction to Public Librarianship, 3rd edition, by Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Jenny S. Bossaller, captures the essence of public librarianship. In it, Katharine Phenix, adult services librarian at Anythink Libraries in Adams County, Colorado, describes how her work makes a difference: “Libraries will be there, collecting, organizing, and making [materials] available … Continue reading Serving the Community
