Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. - Mark Twain (attributed)

A Google a Day

Here's a new site I may use in library media classes next year.  A Google a Day poses a research question for students to look up, as well as an interesting Google app.

Seth Godin on the Future of the Library

Via Stephen's Lighthouse.  This is great food for thought:

Yep, gotta love Seth:  The future of the library

“The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user servicable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

The next library is filled with so many web terminals there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight–it’s the entire point.

Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that? The vibe of the best Brooklyn coffee shop combined with a passionate raconteur of information? There are one thousands things that could be done in a place like this, all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value.

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.”

Read it. Re-post it.

Sources of Disruption in Library Media

This is worth a long look.  Stephan's Light House recently posted Sources of Disruption in Library Land  with the following chart from A Digital Outrigger.  It's just a tool for discussion, but I like the way it is done visually.  It certainly challenges us to take a more global view of the impact of the web on libraries.

Reinventing the research library (from MIT)

This video via Stephen's Lighthouse was produced by the MIT library.  It is also a good vision to consider for our school libraries, as we prepare children for work and education in this century.  Note the emphasis on collaboration in learning.

A Guide to Web Technology

Google has produced a nifty guide to Web Technology which is outlined in the blog TechCrunch.  The guide is best viewed in Google Chrome.  This is a great new resource, because it provides a good outline of the basic knowledge of the web that a student should have.  I am considering taking the outline of the table of contents and putting together a simple curriculum of web technology fot the elementary school level.  The guide provides some excellent safety tools that every student should know.

http://www.20thingsilearned.com/home

New Library of Congress Catalog

The Library of Congress has a new online catalog providing access to a large number of databases: http://eresources.loc.gov/  

You can read more about it at: http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/09/a-new-catalog-in-town/