What Are the Top Academic Librarianship Strories in 2008?
We’d like to know what you think are the top news stories in academic librarianship for 2008. You can help us develop a post about 2008’s top news by taking our brief survey. There are just three questions. We’d also like to know what your crystal ball is showing for 2009.What are you hoping will happen or what would you like to see? Like all of our other surveys it’s totally anonymous, and there are no incentives or prizes. We hope you’ll complete the survey because you like us.
Any Point In Giving Directions?
Planned a library program lately in your city or region? If so, did you think it necessary to give directions to the program location? It just seems sort of pointless to give anyone directions these days – especially to librarians who ought to be super skilled at finding information on the Web. For one thing, most academic institutions – just about any organization or business these days – provides directions to their location – by car or public transportation. Even if there were no directions, you can create your own using any of several map services available on the web. And then again, GPS navigation is become more and more commonplace. Many of us have GPS on a phone or a portable device (my GPS is my favorite e-device). One scenario for when advance directions could be useful is if the program is in a hard to locate building on a large campus. For example, if I’ve never been to the Columbia University campus before, knowing how to get to the right building can be useful. Then again, is there a higher education institution without a campus map on their Website?
Did ACRL Know?
ACRL apparently showed good foresight in choosing Dan Ariely as the speaker for their President’s Program at ALA 2008. Did they know that Fortune Magazine would name Ariely as one of their “10 New Gurus You Should Know?” Ariely’s big idea is that people are predictably irrational. Thanks to ACRL we academic librarians already knew that.
Gadgetary Hopelessness
Just got my latest Time Magazine – the “List” issue – after all lists are now the great American pasttime. They are impossible to resist. I am sorry to report that I don’t own a single gadget on the top 10 gadget list. Unfortunately no GPS device made the list. Guess GPS is either too mainstream or no longer cool. And there’s no way I’m going for the 65-in. television. If I had one of those I’d probably sit in front of it and never stop watching. I’d probably never write another blog post again – no time. I know that may sound tempting to some of you, but try to resist the effort to take up a collection to get me that big screen TV.