30 Aug

Isaak’s Links - 30 August 2005

Posted by Isaak Kwok in Libraries.

  • HOWTO host a library after-school D&D game:
    The publisher of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Wizards of the Coast, have developed a program to help public libraries host D&D games. Seems like a fantastic idea to attract teenagers to come to the library. From playing games, we can (hopefully) move them onto reading D&D and fantasy-related books. Another good point is that we’ll be getting boys into the library. From my personal observations, most secondary school and junior college boys don’t come to the library very often. They’ll only come for self-studying, to do schoolwork-related research or with their female classmates. (via BoingBoing)
  • Podcast from California’s State Librarian:
    California’s State Librarian, Susan Hildreth, does periodic live webcasts to the public where you can chat and ask questions to the library staff. It’s a good way for the library staff to interact with their readers and also for the readers to hear direct from the head librarian. If you couldn’t see the live ones, you can also watch the archived webcasts. They have also provided podcast versions. (via LibrarianInBlack.net)
  • Library Website and Usability (PDF file):
    A usability study of the websites of Ohio’s public libraries, using on Jakob Nielsen’s usability guidelines. There were quite a few findings such as a lack of contact information, too many abbreviations, not having a site search, and poor page titles. Will be good for our webmasters to have a read so that we won’t commit the same usability mistakes. (via LibrarianInBlack.net)
  • Embracing technology in the classroom:
    A professor’s blog entry on the need to change the way she taught in order to keep her students engaged. Instead of Blackboard and her own Web pages, she has started to “incorporate blogs, wikis, Flickr, RSS feeds, and digital storytelling“. Though the information is the same, it’s the way the information was presented that kept her students engaged. I guess it’s quite similar to what we are doing with our class visits modules to involve more participation from students rather than just the librarian doing all the talking. Similarly, we can also make use some of the tools to make the library seem more personable and interactive for our readers. (via Library Stuff)
  • Emergencies, Public Information, and Libraries:
    A good blog entry by Jessamyn on whether the public would go to the library’s website for breaking news in times of emergencies. Some good points raised include: when there is a disaster, what would the library’s role be? and How could a library’s web presence help people? A wonderful question put up is as follows “My question to you: if there was an emergency, could you update your library home page quickly to inform your patrons?“. What do you think? (via librarian.net)
  • You only need to know 5 things to be a library geek:
    A much shorter list than some others that have been put up by others. For me, I know most except for the programming language part and understanding Slashdot topics. Guess I’m still quite far away from being a Library Geek :P (via LISNews.com)
  • Your friendly local library?:
    This Time magazine article talks about some libraries in Canada and the US in getting law enforcement agencies as well as debt collection agencies to make their library patrons return overdue library books. There was one case where a library patron was not granted a bank loan because she had some library fines unpaid and that affected her credit rating. Am sure if this would be applicable to our local context. Will be quite a PR nightmare to handle if it somehow goes haywire in terms of implementation and execution. (via LISNews.com)

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