Archive for September, 2005

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ILF Conference

Wednesday, September 21st, 2005

Last Friday I got to attend a conference sponsored by the Indiana Library Federation (ILF)’s Reference Division. Actually, I got to do a presentation at the conference. The name of the conference was: “How to use Hot Technologies and not get Burned.” I was honored to be a presenter along with Jessamyn West and Michael Stephens! If you’ve never visit their websites, they are MUST-READS for any librarian who develops, uses, dabbles in, or even touches technology!

Jessamyn’s website/blog: Librarian.Net
Michael’s website/blog: Tame the Web

Topics covered at the conference included: blogs, wikis, IM, Jybe, Skype, Flickr, RSS, podcasting, and how/when to use them. Some of it was as basic as introducing people to the technologies, and other parts were more philosophical, asking the “why” questions and discussing benefits of using the technologies.

Final word: We’ve now got a generation of people who were “born with the chip,” who use all these technologies and who expect to see them used by libraries. If we don’t stay on the ball, they’ll drop us like a broken-down Commodore 64 and find someone who’ll give them an iPod Nano!

Posted in Libraries, Technology | 3 Comments »

Flash Memory vs Hard Drives

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

Flash Memory is used in many different ways today, including digital cameras, iPods, and USB memory keys (a.k.a. thumb drives, memory sticks, flash drives, key drives, etc.). These technologies are quickly transforming how we communicate and publish in the world of education.

Now Samsung has developed a way to increase the storage capacity on these flash-based devices even more. Imagine a USB flash drive that is as small as your keychain but which holds as much as the hard drive on your laptop! Or even more? They’re talking 16 or even 32 gigabytes of storage on just one of these units! With the universality of USB memory compatibility, that’s like having a permanent hard drive with you whereever you go!

ZDNet published a story on Monday that described the new developments.

Samsung has developed a new computer flash technology with so much capacity it could replace mini hard drives in some PCs, the company said Monday.

South Korean-based Samsung said its latest NAND memory device has 16-gigabit density. That’s twice the density of the 8-gigabit NAND memory developed last year by Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi and others.

To give you an idea of the size, they’re saying that these devices could be able to store about 8,000 MP3 files (about 680 HOURS of songs!)! Now THAT’S ubiquitous computing!

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

Size of Reference Collection

Thursday, September 8th, 2005

One way that technology is impacting libraries is by forcing a re-evaluation of the reference collection. The more online resources we amass, the less people will use our print resources. We can often find ourselves duplicating our collection, spending money on both formats and using up space, whether virtual or shelf space, to provide these resources.

Some questions we need to ask:

  • How much of our print-based information do we already have access to online?
  • How much of our print-based reference collection do we require just in case our Internet connection goes down?
  • Should our reference collection be large and comprehensive or trim and current?
  • Would our patrons be helped more by using our space for the materials on reference shelves or by additional computer stations?
  • Could we improve our service by paring down our print resources and adding workstations in that same physical space?

The more we add online resources, the more this question will be relevant. As with any other library-related question, it ultimately comes down to, “What can provide the best service to our patrons?” And that question is different for every library.

Posted in Libraries | 1 Comment »

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