Stop Dismissing Google and Wiki, Librarians!

I recently started an internship at one of Northwestern’s libraries at their downtown campus. It is my first time actually working in a library and, while I haven’t done terribly much yet, I have already witnessed something I find maddening: a librarian who thinks using Google and…

The Interest is There…

This past weekend I had the opportunity to represent my library at the Barnes and Noble MiniMaker Faire. The Faire, a nationwide event, featured demonstrations of robotics, 3D Printing, LEGO building and other STEM/STEAM type projects that fall under the moniker of “maker.” Although the…

Native Advertising at the Reference Desk

Increasingly, online news articles have become intertwined with advertising. We have ads that that look like new stories and more often than not, consumers have no idea that what they are reading is a native advertising piece, not a genuine piece of…

Shareable Library

I like my local library, but I wish it had more programming options. Staff member capabilities and resources could limit the types of programming at a library. Librarians could spend days, weeks, or months learning how to do something to fit the needs of their community. In the meantime, there’s…

The Treachery of Technology

Between the years 1928 and 1929 Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte created “The Treachery of Images” in which a lone pipe is shown on a yellow field. Under the pipe Magritte wrote “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” French for “This is not a pipe.” At the time, the painting stirred…

The Power Law of Groups

There have been many times in my classes where a professor divided the students into groups. In these groups, regardless of the class, there was always one person who spoke the most and led the discussion by default (not me). Sometimes it’s because the other students and I couldn’t get…

An ‘Ugly Girl with a Big Mouth’

My grandma used to joke that she was an ugly girl with a big mouth. She wasn’t ugly, but she loved to talk. Every time I visited her home, a few neighbors would either already be there or stop for a visit. During the visits, the phone would constantly ring. People called…

Digitization and Access

Reading about the Google Books project in another class got me thinking about digitizing projects and e-book access. In that class, we read an article called “One Title, Hundreds of Volumes, Thousands of Documents” about one library’s attempt to add to the Google Books project by…

Will the trend of Social Technology lead to Machine Technology and the eventual absence of the Librarian in the Library?

After reading the Benjamin Walter article in class, I wanted to look into how technology has changed dance and music…

Internet Changes

One idea that has come up over and over again this semester is making space for technology. Making physical space in our libraries for the invisible, imperceivable internet, and the changes that the internet has made in our language and behavior. One fairly obvious way that the internet is made…

Reflection on the ECAR Study

While a lot of the ECAR study’s findings seemed obvious to me, some of it was still surprising. Yes, e-textbooks can be difficult to use sometimes, depending on what device they’re on and how easy they are to navigate and annotate — two very important parts of textbook learning…