Discovering new tools and technologies
I’ve been working on a customized implementation of MediaWiki to use for library policies and procedures in technical services. It will be part of our public website, so it needed to fit into its design, incorporate WYSIWYG editing, and only be editable by staff with user accounts. It isn’t live yet, so here are a few screenshots from the test site.
Sample public page
Sample page when logged in
Edit screen
I always like the end of the year book lists published by the New York Times. I found lots of books to add to my “wanna read” list in the Books iRead Facebook app I use.
Making Library Web Sites Usable: A LITA Guide by Thomas Lehman and Terry Nikkel
It gives you practical advice in clear, non-technical prose, plus success stories from 18 academic, public, corporate, and government libraries. Read it and you will learn what usability assessments are, why they are important for libraries, why you should do them regularly, and what the most common challenges are. You will also learn all of the necessary how-tos, whats, and whys for the most common assessment techniques and how to interpret your results, document findings, and effectively communicate results and recommendations.
Late Library Books Can Take Toll on Credit Scores (New York Times)
The December/January 2008 issue (pdf) of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology has a special section on Virtual Reference Services. Contents of special section:
A few blogs about chat reference or for librarians providing chat reference:
