a sometimes blog about mostly libraries
Today I gave a presentation at the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction's Spring 2010 Workshop, my maiden voyage talking about Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning book stuff (for an overview on what the book is actually about, take a look at a short article on the subject in American Libraries). I'm sharing two components of the... Continue Reading →
I have a piece in this month's American Libraries magazine on instructional literacy, or strategies and approaches that working library educators can use to build instructional design and delivery skills as they teach: Build Your Own Instructional Literacy Face it: Teaching is hard. It’s hard from any angle, using any technology, to any learner. Even... Continue Reading →
As I round out the last big project I'll have on my compositional plate for a while, I reflect that I've been experiencing serious bouts of writer's block. Or at least that's what I assumed I was experiencing, until I ran across a post by Scott Berkun that makes the rather prescient point that "it’s... Continue Reading →
I recently answered a few questions for a Viewpoint/Interview piece in the upcoming Reference Services Review (38/2), most of which is now available to subscribers in pre-print. The issue is devoted to mobile services in libraries and features some of the smartest content I've seen on the subject thus far. Several of the articles are... Continue Reading →
In response to a recent uptick in interest in the template survey instrument I designed for Informing Innovation, I'm distributing a newer, quite different, and more academic technology-focused instrument that I recently created for a local project at UCB. It's a working copy not formatted to any degree of fanciness and was also intended to... Continue Reading →
In her In the Library with the Lead Pipe post on the subject, Emily Ford makes the series of points that library outreach is really about marketing, that the product we're selling is service, and that all of this hinges on connecting with one's user community in a personal sense. Marketing is about making a... Continue Reading →
A friend recently told me about an incredible costume he saw on Halloween in San Francisco: a woman wore an orange leotard with jerry-rigged midriff rings made out of fabric and hula-hoops. She also carried a small doll in her likeness that she periodically slammed against the wall or threw on the floor. When prompted,... Continue Reading →
The title of this post has been my motto for what feels like forever, reminding me to focus as I pushed myself through a rather gigantic writing project. Last week I turned in a manuscript that I've been working on for close to two years, which needless to say is a highly emotional (albeit somewhat... Continue Reading →
During a recent year-end purge of my overloaded computer, I discovered a tiny velocipede animation I created some time ago while learning flash (click image to play): May this be the most beautifully useless thing I ever produce.
Anyone who knows me also knows that I am inordinately interested in information graphics, as in tables, charts, maps, and so forth. In homage to this particular aspect of my nerdself, I'm breaking my long "holiday" blogging silence (which has largely consisted of writing my book-fingers to the bone) and welcoming the new year with... Continue Reading →
info-mational 