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For three hours at ISTE’s Digital Age Library Playground, teacher librarians excitedly milled from station to station, absorbing knowledge, connecting with colleagues, and exploring new strategies. At any given time, hundreds of people were not only taking in the presenters’ shared knowledge, but trying out the resources being discussed.
A colleague recently pointed out that IEEE Spectrum had an interactive tool by which you could explore the top programming languages in various areas (e.g., mobile, web, enterprise, and embedded). Besides noting that my favorite web programming language barely made it into the top ten for the Web (Perl, which they mistakenly called PERL), I […]
Virginia’s Newport News Public Library System (NNPLS) launched StatBase, an open-source usage statistics program that enables libraries to track and visualize data on circulation, patron registration, door counts, reference, acquisitions, instructor-led courses, and more. The application is available as a free download on SourceForge.
Few things can be more frustrating to library patrons—or staff, for that matter—than a self-check system that’s ill-suited for its setting. But when such a system runs smoothly, it increases efficiency, protects materials, promotes library programming, and instills confidence in patrons, which translates into increased circulation and a staff with more time to focus on things like programs and services.
The ninth annual Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) conference this year hosted more than 650 attendees from 40 states and six countries, representing a spike in attendance of more than 20 percent compared with 2013. Online viewership of the conference’s sessions rose significantly as well, with more than 50 U.S. academic libraries registering for ER&L Online.
Sometimes I’m shocked to realize that I’ve been writing software for over 30 years — longer than some of my younger colleagues have even been alive. And people who know my code are shocked as well, that so much time could pass and my code still sucks. But I have an excuse: programming does not […]
Code4Lib is a unique place. I don’t know of another space like it in the library world. It has inside jokes all over the place, from the love of bacon, to the poking of fun at OCLC as an organization and me as an individual. Both myself and my employer (OCLC) are good for it, […]
Today’s news of Google acquiring Nest Labs, which produces one of the more expensive but also most advanced thermostats for the home, has been all over the place. As you might imagine when Google buys anyone, there has been a lot of speculation about what it might mean. I have a variety of opinions on […]
The number of session proposals submitted for the 2014 Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) conference was up 95 percent compared with last year, and participation in the community voting process to select sessions rose from about 450 voters for the 2013 conference, to more than 700 for the 2014 show.
