A few days ago, a Finnish librarian I know posted a picture on Facebook of several people reading while riding public transportation. Only one person was reading a physical book, and my friend mused about the future of libraries. Ever the optimist, I suggested to her that the future will involve librarians providing virtual reference, … Continue reading Building the Shelfless Library
Did you know there are an estimated 2 million home-educated children in the United States? According to a report from the National Home Education Research Institute, there were approximately 2.04 million American homeschoolers in 2010, and that number is increasing by 2%–8% each year. That’s almost 4% of all school-age children in this country. Do … Continue reading Make Room for Homeschoolers
I’ve been a librarian for 30 years and have seen a lot of changes during that time. I’ve welcomed them as new challenges, even as I’ve seen many of my older colleagues become very negative—whining, complaining, and vowing to retire before they have to alter their ways. But in the past couple of years, the … Continue reading My Year of RDA
I’m sure you found all of these as fascinating as I did, undoubtedly also wondering where this was going. These facts and a few gazillion others come to you courtesy of Factual, the brainchild of mathematician Gilad Elbaz, who gave us the company that is now Google’s AdSense. In Factual’s 500 terabytes of storage, there’s … Continue reading Data, Data Everywhere
Our mission with Outside/In has been to take useful ideas from the larger world of trends (outside) to see how they apply to libraries (in). In that vein, we’re bringing you a roundup from our spring Libraryland conference tour, during which we made several stops and met hundreds of amazing folks and organizations along the … Continue reading Spring Libraryland Tour
Many librarians have embraced the use of active learning in their teaching. Moving away from lectures and toward activities that get students using the skills they’re learning can lead to more meaningful learning experiences. It’s one thing to tell someone how to do something, but to have them actually do it themselves, with expert guidance, … Continue reading The Guide on the Side
Ed. note: The following is the text of a speech given April 1 by retired United States Rep S. Douglas Maynard before the 4th Annual Restore Intellectual Property Protection for Economic Recovery Summit and Retreat. First of all, to the members of Restore Intellectual Property Protection for Economic Recovery, I wish to extend my sincere … Continue reading Let’s Put an End to Socialized Intellectual Property
The focus on electronic publishing and access through libraries to digital editions (ebooks) has been intense, particularly in recent months. The policies and practices of the “Big Six” publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster—in relation to access to ebooks through libraries (or lack thereof), have elicited strong responses from across the library … Continue reading Hot Issues Drive ALA Presidential Priorities
Librarians who teach are always looking for ways to get patrons more actively engaged in instruction sessions. Research has shown that active learning can have positive effects on student learning and certainly helps to get students to reflect on the application of what they’re learning. In large lecture classes, most active learning exercises simply aren’t … Continue reading Click Here to Engage
When I think of history, two quotations come to mind. One, by Marcus Cicero, says history illuminates the present; the other, by Henry Ford, says we must live in the present: “History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us … Continue reading The Librarian’s History of the Library
At the recent Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia, my friend and Booklist columnist David Wright, who was giving a presentation on literary fiction, used a term I had never heard, translit, to describe that boundary-breaking kind of novel that shatters all the too-often pigeonholing categories we use to compartmentalize modern fiction. The term, David … Continue reading Translit: New Genre Collapses Time and Space
Chances are, your library is chock-full of people. Some are staff and there may be the occasional vendor. But the vast majority—those who visit libraries—are part of a group that library workers have had significant trouble defining. How library workers view library patrons reflects our philosophical worldview. Much has been written on how patrons perceive … Continue reading Just Whom Do We Serve?
