Wikipedia News: Usable, Accurate, and Edited

I just wanted to make sure you all caught today’s article on CNN.com “Wikipedia: No Longer the Wild West“.   It could make an interesting teaching point when discussing online communities, accuracy of reporting, and evaluation of information.

Read Full Post »

No Good News is…the News

The year is 2015 and “the press as you know it, has ceased to exist…” forewarns the speaker in the “Sci-fi” video clip Epic 2015 by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson.   Epic 2015 is a great tool to use in the classroom when discussing new technology and the media.   A mixture of historical truth and [...]

Read Full Post »

Librarians: Get Smart

I’m sure many of you read the Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” (July/August 2008), where Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is altering  our reading and thinking abilities.   As a follow up to this piece, the Atlantic recently published “Get Smart” (July/August 2009) in which Jamais Cascio argues that Google induced ADD is actually not as bad as [...]

Read Full Post »

Librarians in the Know for When You’re on the Go…

Following Anita Whitehead’s presentation on “The Roving Librarian” at the SUNLA 2009 conference, I’ve been thinking a lot about starting a similar program at Buffalo State. Realizing the importance of good marketing, we are currently brainstorming what to call ourselves (I don’t know if I really like the word roving…maybe vagabond or something else would [...]

Read Full Post »

The Hidden Value of Books: The Social Reader

There’s a few things that I look forward to each month– Fridays, pay-days, and getting my new Wired magazine.  At the risk of sounding like a commercial, if you’re a librarian– you should be reading Wired.  This month’s issue is full of articles relevant to our field, including a piece entitled Googlenomics (explaining just how [...]

Read Full Post »

Podcast + Professor + Notes = A+

The days of recording lectures on tiny cassette tapes may be over, but the usefulness of  audio in education remains a hot topic.   According to the recent study “itunes University and the Classroom: Can Podcasts Replace Professors?” which appeared in Computers & Education (April 2009), students who listened to a lecture podcast and took [...]

Read Full Post »

Wisdom of Crowds?

As a follow up to my recent post “Confusion, Ignorance, and Critical Thinking: Why Librarians Matter”, I came across an opinion piece written in response to Clive Thompson’s article which I also referenced, “Manufacturing Confusion” (Wired, Issue 17.02).  Barry Berger replies, using Wikipedia as an example:
“Wikipedia does not build real knowledge through consensus anymore than [...]

Read Full Post »

YouTube is the next generation search engine?

I recently came across “Is YouTube the Next Google?” at ReadWriteWeb and it got me thinking. Especially the part:
Whenever his son needed any information, he would open up YouTube, type in the search term and then just watch the videos that showed up as matches. He never Googled anything; he never went to any other [...]

Read Full Post »

Howl on Trial

“The paper burns, but the words fly away.” -Akiba ben Joseph
In my Lib300 Advanced Research Methods Course, I use the poem Howl to talk about censorship.  Many people don’t realize that Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem, which appeared in the book Howl and Other Poems (City Lights, 1956), was seized by San Francisco Customs authorities on [...]

Read Full Post »

Thinking Outside the Book

I’m excited to have two essays (“Libraries and Literary Clubs: The Perfect Match” and “The Poetry Sweepstakes: Beating the Odds of Getting Published”) featured in this new anthology compiled and edited by Carol Smallwood. The book has many creative ideas to offer to innovative librarians…
“Professionals in all areas of librarianship will find inspiration in [...]

Read Full Post »