Comments(0) Librarian Necklace by brookadelphia 
Kern sweatshirt (typography joke) from Veer 
Pixelated jewels by mike and maaike
nice_tags T-shirt from the consumating.com folks 
Comments(9) As a result of this post, Eric Frierson, Donna Hayward and I bought a poll question on facebook to find out how facebook users prefer to contact their librarians.
Here’s how the poll question appeared in the News Feed of selected Facebook users in the Michigan network:
See the results below
The first thing that stands out is that only 1 out of 200 said they’d prefer to get research help from a librarian on facebook. I don’t suppose this is too surprising because I don’t think people quite yet consider social networking a research tool. I hope this isn’t disconcerting to librarians on facebook because I think there’s still potential here… What I do find really encouraging is that only 38 out of 200 said they weren’t at all interested in contacting a librarian - that’s pretty good! And it looks like in-person interactions are still tops. On a side note, I think it’s really unfortunate that the oldest age range option for the survey is 35-49. So there’s no one over 49 on facebook!?
Comments(1) There’s a recent trend at our library: non-public service librarians volunteering to do reference. I think this is great! Since my “Interface & User Testing Specialist” position is a primarily HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) based job and doesn’t include any reference duties, I started volunteering a couple of semesters ago. Because it’s part of my job to understand library users - what better way to do that than to spend a couple hours a week helping patrons navigate the tons of resources available to them. Its one thing to look at an online resource and declare “this is so not intuitive!” and another thing to have to repeatedly try to explain to patrons the 20 steps required to find what they want. I feel very lucky to be in a position where I have the opportunity to interact directly with our users outside of an official usability context.
So back to the title of this post. Periodically the idea that librarians are going to become obsolete reemerges. Right, everything is going to be online and fully searchable. But there’s going to be exponentially more information every year. And much of this information will remain proprietary and subscription based. Of course I’m a big proponent of having easy to use interfaces, but interfaces are only useful if they themselves can be found. This is where librarians come in. They are the sifters, funnels, aggregators, and above all mediators between the people and the technology.
Comments(0) Comments(0) Comments(0) Comments(0) Comments(0) Comments(1) Another fantastic video from the TED conference.
In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale.
From my del.icio.us