Librarian X

Audio Books by Playful Librarian via Flickr

I wrote a short article about free audio books for Georgia Library Quarterly’s Winter 2010 issue. It’s for a regular column called “My own private library,” in which librarians write about the books in their home libraries.

GLQ isn’t online yet, but they’ve given me permission to post the article here:

(continue reading…)

The February 2010 issue of College and Research Library News includes my article  “Superpower your browser with LibX and Zotero: Open source tools for research.” It’s an overview of these two research tools and my ideas about how and why they’re valuable resources for academic libraries. If you’re interested in my March 23 ACRL webcast, this article gives you a good idea of the kind of thing I’ll be covering, but of course with live demos and discussion.

Superpower your browser with LibX and Zotero: Open source tools for research via C&RL News

For a couple of years now my friend Beth Gallaway has been asking me to submit a proposal with her for a Simmons College LIS continuing education class. We finally did it this year, and I’m pleased to say we’re co-teaching an online workshop together this spring:

They’re Googling You: Online Identity for LIS Professionals

May 1 – 31, 2010

Should you separate your professional online identity from the personal, and if so, how? Self-promotion and branding is becoming increasingly important as library professionals face dwindling traditional employment opportunities, due to layoffs, downsizing, budget cuts, and library closings. On a more positive note, library staff wishing to contribute back to the profession may want to hone a professional identity that makes one marketable for teaching and training purposes, conference speaking or consulting. Developing a professional online identity for either purpose may be a challenging and rewarding endeavor.

More info on the Simmons site, and you can register here. If you’ve never set up a blog or personal website, you’ll learn how — if you have, we’ll talk about how to use it and how to augment it. Topics will include privacy, professional development, personal branding, and technology how-to.

Hi! I still live here. Busy month. We did a podcast! Here it is:

Or, you know, go listen to it on the Adventures in Library Instruction site.

Have a good weekend!

 

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I’m teaching a webcast for ACRL: “Superpower Your Browser: Open Source Research Tools.” I’ll cover the search and discovery tool LibX and the citation and bibliography tool Zotero. Learn the essentials of both programs, ideas for supporting them at your library, and a little about how open source is good for libraries and library users.

The session is March 23 at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern. More details and registration info on the ACRL site.

If you saw the Chronicle of Higher Ed article this week about Mellon closing its Research in IT grant program, you may have been concerned (as I was) about its impact on Zotero. This grant was a major contributor to Zotero’s funding.

Happily, Dan Cohen reports that Zotero and the Center for History and New Media is in no danger of folding, and has diverse enough funding to continue actively. It sounds like they have ambitious plans for new projects in the future. Whew!

I’m emerging from holiday break just long enough to link to my picture on the Geeky Tattoos blog, whose author calls me a “hardcore librarian.” Word.

Before my winter break starts, I’ve posted the December episode of Adventures in Library Instruction. Happy holidays, everybody. See you in January.

 

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Zotero just announced a new free storage feature for attachments. I blogged about it over on the library’s site, so I won’t repeat it here.

The first 100 megs of storage is free. I’ve got a fair-sized library, and I’m only using half that. I probably won’t need to upgrade to paid storage until well into next year, but you can get a gigabyte for twenty bucks a year. That strikes me as quite reasonable. I’d pay twenty dollars for another gig in my Dropbox in a heartbeat.

Hi!

So what have I been doing since Internet Librarian a month ago? Anna rightly called me out for not blogging much this fall.

Well, we did another episode of Adventures in Library Instruction a couple of weeks ago, but you knew that.

I’ve been writing a lot for the last month. I wrote an article about LibX and Zotero for College and Research Libraries News, which I’ll link here once it’s up. It’s also sort of a tie-in for a webcast I’ll be doing for them early next year.

I also did an article for Georgia Library Quarterly, which I’ll post here after it goes to print. It’s for a column called “My Own Private Library,” about librarians’ personal libraries. I wrote about free audio books and fiction podcasts.

I’m trying to finish an article on DRM before I go out of town for the holidays, and I hope that’s it for this year. (If I mention it in public maybe I’ll shame myself into finishing it.)

Coming up next year, I’m doing a presentation on LibGuides and Zotero for the staff of GALILEO, a Georgia virtual library initiative. I’m also been asked to give an online Zotero workshop for librarians and staff of a New Jersey library system, and there’s that ACRL webcast in March. In April, I’m giving a podcasting presentation at Computers in Libraries.

Plus, you know, doing my actual job too. In some ways my first fall back at GSU Library has blasted by like a jet-powered monkey-navigated rocket car across the alkali flats, and in some ways this has seemed like the endless semester. Lots of changes, and I’m looking forward to my new role as a subject liaison. I’m really enjoying learning my way around collection development and I’m looking forward to working on outreach next semester and getting to know the Comm department.