Top five TED talks for librarians

Inspired by the brilliant Library blog Agnostic, maybe who made a list of top five TED talks that librarians should watch, I wanted to make my own list. Why don´t you do to?

1. Temple Grandin – The world needs all kinds of minds

I am the parent of a child with Aspergers and ADHD which means that this talk means something to me on a personal level, but it also has a great significance for me as a professional librarian. School and public libraries are often the refuge for children who do not fit in at school and in social settings. Libraries are environments where children on the autism spectrum both get a stable and less impression-rich environment and get to persue their interests with people who accept and enourage information gathering and deep diving. By understanding children with special gifts, librarians can do an even better job at making the library a haven for children and young adults who struggle with everyday life and the demands of social interactions.

P.S. Do get the movie about Temple Grandin in your library! And watch it yourself:-)

2. Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves
An innovative look at how children learn and can teach themselves. From a library perspective this is important. Libraries are doing this every day by putting children and tools together, but we need to understand the processes and needs better to do a better job.

3. Taylor Mali – What teachers make
A great slam poet and one of the really powerful ways of showing what importance teachers (and librarians) have on kids lives. Think about this poem the next time somebody looks down their nose at you for choosing a life of public service and powerful infulence in peoples life instead of a life of money.

4. Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter …
Another poet. It is amazing how powerful poetry is in this setting. I wonder if all the really booring poetry we read about in school was as powerful when it was written and performed? I wish I was as good as this to make poetry as powerful and alive to the people in my library.

5. Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library
Basically the fundamentals of librarianship in a digital age!

Arkivert i:Blogging, education, poetry, TED talks

One month without Facebook and Twitter

On January 26th  it was one month until my tenth anniversary as blogger. This started a train of thougth that mostly was about how my blogging frequency has decreased over the years. Of course it was easy to blame life, but I also noticed that my activity on Facebook and Twitter was pretty high and that much of what I used to post on the blog I now post on Facebook and Twitter. This, plus the nagging feeling that social media had a fragmenting effect on my family life. My head was often elsewhere, thinking about funny or interesting links from friends, or just good status updates from people.

Anyway, I wanted to find out if my blogging frequency would increase if I dropped out of Facebook and Twitter. So I decided to do a small experiment. I would be off Facebook and Twitter for a month, i.e. until my tenth anniversary as a blogger on February 26th. Then I would sum things up in a blogpost and post it on Facebook and Twitter.

First I should say that it was not a total absense of FB in my life. I posted links if there was a “Share on Facebook” button on the page, and I was on FB for the “save libraries day” as well as conference posting from the Bergen Neptune library seminar on February 15th. I also communicated with a few people on Twitter when that was the natural channel.

But the main point for me was to avoid the checking of status updates, the frequent interruptions and the distraction that FB and twitter invites.

I kept a short keyword file for this experience on Evernote and I noticed that the keywords went from negative to postive as time went by. At first my main feeling was one of lonelyness and isolation. I did not know what was happening to my friends and I missed all the cool links and discussions going on. On the plus side was less distractions and more uninterrupted time with my kids. I used my iPad less (is that good or bad mr. Jobs?)

It was more noticeable that I think in “status updates” – when you don´t have a place to post them they keep swirling around in the brain. And “big” things in life feels smaller when they are not shared with others.

When I try to sum this last month up I think that I both came to appreciate the distraction-less time and miss the connectedness that FB and Twitter offers. On balance I think that I will try to be more aware of when and how I use social media and try to limit the time I´m on. But I also learnt the value of the connectedness that social media offers. I see that I get a lot from communicating and just beeing updated.

On the whole I´m not dropping Facebook and Twitter, but it will be easier to take a short break when needed and limit the exposure to social media in my life.

The one thing I did not get, that I hoped for, was more time to blog and more blogposts. I did blog a little more, but less that I expected when I started out on this little experiment.

Now I just have to sum up ten years blogging.

Arkivert i:Blogging, Facebook, Twitter

First gold star since sunday school

The Salem press library literature publisher organized a little blog awards thing this spring. And to my great surprise this blog was actually awarded a gold star.

Blogs listed with a gold star were considered by our judges to be of significant quality that they stood above the norm.

Thank you! It is always good to be appreciated and when I look at the company I´m in, I really appreciate the honor. Some great blogs was singled out as winners, I read enough of them to agree totally with the judges and just hope that there will be a new award at some later time to shine the spotlight on some of the other great library blogs out there.

Arkivert i:Blogging, Blog awards, gold star

Ada Lovelace day – missed:-(

I missed blogging on Ada Lovelace day this year because I was at home with a sick kid. Sometimes life does interfere with our best plans and intentions:-/ But I thought that I´d just mention two great women in technology that I admire even if it is two days late.

Jill Walker Rettberg and Torill Mortensen – the two sharpest people I know. Their insight and intelligence is self evident in their blogging and writing, but they are also fabulous conversation partners and you always leave a discussion with both or either of them with new insights and angles to a problem or issue. The reason I write about them together is that I met and got to know both at about the same time. Jill and Torill has opened my eyes to the complexity and many facets of online gaming and thinking around communication and content production in the digital dimention. Reading and listening to them will always leave you with a greater understanding, and usually more questions, after than you had before.

Jill introduced me to blogging and encouraged me (even talking me through my first blog software installation process) to explore and find my own voice when blogging. She is the first norwegian academic blogger and blazed the trail for all other academic blogs that have followed in her footsteps. Just working towards and finally securing acceptance for the concept of academic blogging is a great achievement in it self.

Torill is the norwegian gaming research maven. She has paitiently educated norwegian journalists about online gaming and computer gaming in general for years. I know it has been an uphill struggle, but Torill persevered and I think that the degree of acceptance and understanding of gaming in norwegian media today is in part due to her patience and endurance in explaining that: “No, gaming is not dangerous, it will not rot teenagers brains, playing GTA will not turn everybody into homicidal maniacks etc.” Torills research is going to take off now that she is going off from her beloved Volda to Copenhage and ITU.

What these two women have in common, apart from intelligence, integrity and academic rigour, is an openness to new ideas and interest in other people. And fortunately, they never seem to loose their sense of humor! Great fun people to be with in other words:-)

Hurray for geeky women who really makes the world a better place:-)

Arkivert i:Blogging, Ada Lovelace Day 2010

Happy Ada Lovelace day!

Today is Ada Lovelace day. A day when we shine a strong light on the great women of computing, or girl-geeks, that we want to bring attention to. Working in a womens profession I have no problem finding some great names that should be acknowledged, but today I want to go outside the library profession and our own age. 

 

Grace Hopper

 I thought I would write a little about one person I learnt about when I started working for the Norwegian Navy. Her name is  Grace Hopper, also called “Amazing Grace”, who during the second world war worked for the United States Naval computing department and after the war was an important part in developing computing languages such as COBOL and promote computers as a tool to young adults. 

 

What is important is that Grace Hopper, who retired as an rear admiral, was a woman who never let opposision stop her from making a contribution. She entered the male dominated field of computing and by perseverence and intelligence made a place for herself. I get more impressed everytime I learn something new about Grace Hopper, and I hope you who read about her remember what a pioneer she was.

I’m really happy that the U.S. Navy honored her with the naming of the destroyer USS Hopper. It is good to see such a male dominated institution honor a woman and her contribution.

 

I will of course reccomend a great book on Grace Hopper:

 
Grace Hopper : admiral of the cyber sea
Kathleen Williams
Annapolis : Naval Institute Press, 2004
ISBN: 1557509522
 
Happy Ada Lovelace day, and happy Grace Hopper day!

Arkivert i:Blogging, AdaLovelaceDay09

Slow blogging?

Have I involuntarily become a slow blogger? Slow blogging manifesto is an attractive idea, but I feel that it is room for both slow and fast in one blog, and with RSS it is not as if readers have to check in to see if anything is written. Of course, if you are deleted from anybodys RSS-reader, then you are dead:-)

It is not as if I have stopped blogging because I am tired of it. Just that real life has grabbed most of my attention for a long while. Work, children, illness and other more mundane reasons have pushed my attention away from writing about libraries.

The writing I have done has been focused on Twitter and some comments in other blogs.

That will change though. I´m applying for the “first librarian” program (norwegian only) at the Oslo University College. This is a qualifying program for librarians who want to work with more hands-on projects than is usual in ordinary Ph.D. programs, but it still qualifies for positions where the usual requirement is a Ph.D.

This is a great opportunity to work in my own library with projects that directly benefit the library users and hopefully improves the library services and integration in the academy.

And it wil be nice to look at broader issues than the daily immediate challenges.

Arkivert i:Blogging, Users, studies, twittering, writing

Negative vibes

In one of my favorite movies, Kelly’s heroes, Donald Sutherland plays a tank commander who meets all criticism with “Don’t give me those negative vibes man!” and then goes on to do whatever he wanted without worry or second thoughts.

Yesterday I was guilty of negative vibes. I probably should not have vented on the blog, or just written whatever I thought down without publishing it. I’m unsure about whether it was a mistake, but I am open to the possibility.

What did I think would be the consequences of this rant? I’m not really sure. Maybe I needed the release of pent up frustration and maybe, in the back of my mind, I hoped it would be a bugle call to wake people up? Totally mistaken in that case. Most librarians who read the “culture of nice“-blogpost will feel attacked and unfairly critizised, one librarian has already posted a comment to that effect, and the post will probably never be the starting point of a good discussion on the problems and challenges that libraries and librarians face today. So, probably a total waste of bytes and my readers time. Sorry about that, but “it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want to“:-) Please feel free to not read on.

To engender a true culture of innovation and development we have to stop pulling each other down, I did so yesterday, and I will not do so again. I want to focus on the positive things that happens, “positive vibes” if you like, and see how many librarians of all ages embrace and try out new ways of making the library useful to the public and more fun to work with and in.

As development of library services continue we will see project failures, successes and many inbetween, but what I would really hope for was a change in the core culture of libraries/librarians where the lessons from the failures where valued as learning and more important than the successes that we really want to show off. I will start this off with admitting that yesterdays blogpost was a mistake and that I have learnt a valuable lesson on what I want to write about on this blog, and what I should keep to myself or address in a more constructive and calm mood.

Thank you for your attention, hope to see you back here later.

Thomas

Arkivert i:Blogging, criticism

A foolish thing

I have decided to write a book, about Library 2.0, in Norwegian. This will be my No. 1 foolish thing of 2006. I know that it is foolish, but since I have had more fun and learnt more from the foolish stuff I have attempted in my life than all my sensible activities combined, this does not scare me much.

The background for this foolishness is something like this:

1. I feel there is a need for a book about Library 2.0, mainly to reach all the librarians who don´t read blogs, know what RSS is and who do not encounter the Web 2.0 in their everyday lives. All these librarians are not opposed to the Library 2.0 ideas, but they have not encountered the concept of Library 2.0 in a format that they are familiar with, and made relevant to their everyday working life. They need a chance to digest these ideas and make up their own mind with a minimum of knowledge about the background of Library 2.0.

2. My employer have given me R&D time to write this book! 50% of april and 10% of the rest of the year.

3. I want to attempt to write a book. I have taken part in the editing and writing of chapters in a book earlier. The norwegian Handbook in children´s library work (2003) where I wrote a chapter about Generation N. (From the book Growing up digital). It was great fun, really frustrating and a wonderful experience when the whole thing was done and published.
4. I want to write a book in the Library 2.0 spirit. I will write the book itself in Norwegian, but most of what I think and explore will appear in this blog in "Beta-format". There will therefore be ample opportunity for anybody who wants to comment, contribute or critizise to do so in this blog. I have high hopes for this book to be a collective endeavour and will share the credit with everybody who contributes.

5. I want to try out the web 2.0 tools and how they will contribute to writing this book. I will write most of the book in Writely, use del.icio.us for my bookmarks, use Library Thing to have an overview of the books I use, and so on.

6. I just had this great title I wanted to use! Library 2.0 – Hope or Hype?

Arkivert i:Blogging, Books, Library 2.0, Norway

Talis white paper on Library 2.0

Just as I was about to leave work yesterday a new item popped up on my Bloglines notifier, Panlibus had a new post, so I “just checked” instead of closing down as I should have. A new white paper: Library 2.0, – the challenge of disruptive innovation.(PDF) appeared in Adobe reader, and I just had to sit down and read. Here are two of the many things that really caught my attention:

What good librarian would choose to hand ‘truth’ down from the shelves to those who then passively consume it, rather than engage in a dialogue with participative lifelong learners? Is it not preferable to help users build their understanding of the world around them with reference to a wealth of experiences from across formats, media, contexts, and their analogue and digital manifestations?

and

Remixing library services
Fundamental to the changes we anticipate for libraries is a shift from the delivery of a library service just within the library building, or simply from a library’s own web site. Consequently, as well as continuing to offer services to those who come to us, we need to reach beyond the boundaries of the library space, and begin pushing services out to people in the places where they are already interacting. For example, new technologies and new attitudes make it eminently feasible to break the OPAC down into a set of functional components, and to make each of those components available for inclusion in almost any page on the web, whether library-focussed or not. The OPAC itself is enriched by this approach, and the services formerly available only via the OPAC become far more widely available, and consequently far more valuable.

I really love it when somebody says what I have had mulling about in my head for so long, but have been unable to express in such a clear and interesting way.

The first quote is a great way to clarify on of the main issues with Library 2.0, that the central issue to look at and improve is the relationship between library/librarian and users, and accepting that the power is shifting to the user. In Library 2.0 there is a willingness to embrace the new opportunities to involve users in creating a better service on their own terms.

The last quote about the OPAC really resonates with a debate about library portals going on in Norway just now. I’m really in favor of a solution where the bits of any library service that is relevant are incorporated into any place where the user finds it useful. I really like the idea that library services becomes a part of a more complex service universe instead of a single library portal where only the most dedicated will go and find what they need. The recent linking between several national library holdings and Google Scholar is a typical example of the thinking that libraries need to be integrated into existing and popular services. Wonderful work and very interesting to see where this development will go. I am especially interested in how the users of these services will react.

The Talis paper is very interesting, a good read, and easily accessible for all interested in the Library 2.0 discussion. The parts where the paper discusses Talis own technology are very useful for those of us that have to make desicions on ILS development and challenges both us librarians as customers, and all ILS vendors as suppliers. I hope that Norwegian ILS vendors read and learn. I for one will think about what issues I will raise with my own ILS vendor to try to bring our system into the Library 2.0 world.

And yes, I did manage to pick up my son from school before it closed:-)

Arkivert i:Blogging, Library 2.0, OPAC

Blogging in english

I have discovered over the last two months that blogging in Norwegian limits the number of readers and feedback, and participation in the general discussion on the subject that is on the top of my mind right now, Library 2.0. I have therefore decided to try blogging on this subject in english to see if I can participate and become a part of the Library 2.0 universe that seems to grow daily.

There are two main reasons for this, one is an interview I did with Michael Stephens for my podcast Bibliotek 2.0, in english, and I recieved moore feedback and responses on this podcast and the post on the podcast blog that on anything else I have written or podcast so far. This proved to me that there is a greater discussion that the one going on in Norway and the Scandinavian countries, and that it would be fun to participate in that discussion.

The second reason is the discussion recently on norwegian library e-mail lists on publishing in english or norwegian. I was a bit taken back by the provincialism and hostility from a lot of norwegian librarians to the thought of publishing in english and realized that this lack of acceptance of english as a professional language is one of the things that hold back norwegian librarianship. I rather want to be a part of the solution, not the problem. Therefore I have started publishing in english. Both for my norwegian fellow librarians, but also for a world-wide audience.

And lastly, sorry for all the mistakes in spelling and grammar in advance. I hope to have a lot of fun with this blog, so correct Queen’s english is not my top priority.

P.S. I’m not going to stop writing my norwegian library blog or stop podcasting in norwegian.

Arkivert i:Blogging, Language, Norway, Podcast, Scandinavia