Infoblog

We talk a lot in libraries about accessibility, and how important it is to make sure that special needs users can access all of our services. But what is a blind user’s Internet experience like? This Gizmodo article does a nice job of laying it out for us sighted folks. Good stuff!

The 32 fellows for the 2010 Eureka! Leadership Institute have been selected! Congratulations to them all! the Institute will take place Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2010 at the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose, CA. This year’s fellows are:

• Bonnett, Polly – Sierra Madre Public Library
• Burdick, Ashley – Palos Verdes Library District
• Calhoun, Amy – Sacramento Public Library
• Clark, Sarah – Windward School Library
• Dones, Rosalyn – San Bernardino County Library System
• Easterwood, Lori – Sacramento Public Library
• Engel, June – San Diego County Library
• Escamilla, Manuel – Santa Ana Public Library
• Fisher, Helen – San Bernardino County Library
• Garcia, Joseph Trent – San Francisco Public Library
• Hartman, Anna – San Diego County Library
• Kanth, Gayathri – Santa Clara County Library
• Kolb, William (Bill) – Contra Costa County Library
• Kuo, Alice – Monrovia Public Library
• Kraus, Hildie – San Diego County Library
• Lansdown, Erica – Long Beach Public Library
• Lopez, Patricia – Santa Ana Public Library
• Lovell, Rita – Alpine County Library
• McCurtis, Kirby – San Diego Public Library
• McNabb, Leslie – San Diego Public Library
• Menear, Kaitlin Elizabeth – Palos Verdes Library District
• Moretta, Christina – San Francisco Public Library
• Pelman, Amy – Burlingame Public Library
• Rowe, Donald – County of Los Angeles Public Library
• Ruhland, Liz – Contra Costa County Library
• Serrano, Susan – Butte County
• Smith, Jennifer – Monterey County Library
• Sweeney, Patrick – San Mateo County Library
• Thomas, Sally – Hayward Public Library
• Thrasher, Shawn – Monrovia Public Library
• Vantrease, Sarah – Los Angeles Public Library
• Zeoli, Julie – Yorba Linda Public Library

The mentors for the 2010 Institute are: Jose Aponte, Rosario Garza, Kathy Gould, Genesis Hansen, Luis Herrera, Rivkah Sass, Derek Wolfgram, and Patty Wong.

In this edition of Thinking Out Loud, George and Joan discuss the role libraries should be playing in the care and maintenance of Wikipedia. George heard Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit charitable organization that operates Wikipedia), speak at the Canadian Library Association. She related a story about a historian she had heard speak who felt that it was his professional responsibility to monitor Wikipedia articles for historical accuracy. George and Joan use this as a jumping off point to look at what librarians’ professional responsibilities. Is it reading professional journals? Is it keeping up with new technologies? Is it delivering services at the point of need? Are we looking for new ways to do librarian “stuff”? If we’re not, they worry, we’re at risk of extinction. It’s food for thought.

Here’s the FAQ for librarians about Wikipedia that George mentions in the podcast.

In this podcast, Michael Cart looks at the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners. While on the topic of book awards, he also makes time for the Diagram Prize (for the year’s oddest book titles), as well as the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s literature.

In this edition of Thinking Out Loud, George and Joan take on what they call “the classic objections” – things that libraries say to avoid taking risks or making changes. Why? Joan says it stems from a lack of confidence in their area(s) of expertise, and the dreaded “What if it works?” among other things. Listen and see what you think!

Oh, and here are the classic objections they cite:

• It will never work
• We tried that in 1997 and it was a disaster
• Our patrons/member libraries/board won’t like it
• It will take too much time
• We can’t afford it
• We can’t do it without more staff
• We need to focus on the basics
• It means throwing away all the hard work we’ve done
• You can’t prove it’s any better than what we have
• This isn’t why I got an MLS

In his latest podcast for Infopeople, Michael Cart looks at past and recent winners of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. The award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association. This year’s Printz winner was Going Bovine by Lidda Bray.

I’ve seen this posted around (Tame the Web, Stephen’s Lighthouse), but it bears repeating.

Don’t let history repeat itself.

In this edition of Thinking Out Loud, George and Joan talk about cycles, as in the ebb and flow of various things (good and bad) that happen in libraryland. Everything changes, everything evolves, and things inevitably move forward not back. I’m not doing the topic justice: you’ll just have to listen to get the full value.

Guess who was recently censored in New Jersey? Yep, it’s Infopeople’s own book maven Michael Cart. In this podcast, he talks about the experience of having his book Love and Sex: Ten Stories of Truth challenged in a New Jersey high school and discusses other issues regarding book banning and truth-denying.

Cites for this podcast are here, in PDF format.

If you have ever watched or been a fan of public television, you will know about WGBH out of Boston. They brought Nova, Masterpiece Theatre (now just Masterpiece, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow, Curious George, Mystery and Julia Child to our TVs. Now you can watch or listen to an amazing collection of clips from their archives via their Open Vault project. Register for an account (it’s free) and jump in. As they describe it:

[Open Vault] … provide[s] online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning.

Thanks to Roy Tennant’s Digital Libraries blog for the tip!