Article: Teens Reading More

Teens are reading more now than they have in ages. Article.

YouTube video

Watch what happens when Godzilla returns a book late. Watch it.

Genealogy and politics

Interesting genealogical "skeletons" have been found lurking in the closets of public officials. Recently the news media has focused attention on the revelations of Ancestry.com staffers and their discovery of links between the ancestors of Al Sharpton and the ancestors of the late Strom Thurmond. This seems to be turning into a trend with the next presidential election on the horizon, evidence has been brought to light concerning the ancestry of presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. It appears in early findings that the Illinois Senator's mother's Irish ancsetors were slave owners. What will they find for Hilary and Rudi? And you thought genealogy was boring. Actually I am impressed by their research. In that doing research for African American ancestors can often be very difficult due to a lack of records. It will be interesting to see more of the documentation used to verify these conclusions. However, if you have customers who wish to begin tracing their African American heritage we do have several useful titles in the collection. A recent addition is Henry Louis Gates's Finding Oprah's roots: finding your own would be of interest.

CBS Early Show had a segment on "the new face of libraries".

New And Improved Libraries
With competition from book stores and the Internet, libraries are looking for new ways to attract users. Susan McGinnis takes a look at what some facilities are doing to revamp their image. Check it out, here - http://http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2600210n

Personally, I found nothing new that we haven't been doing for years! Also, 3 things that bothered me in the report: Harry starts off the report by saying that you can find anything you need Online; the website they pulled up was, the always authoritative, Wikipedia; and they end the report talking about library fines, you know if you return your items on time there is no cost to using your local library! Ok, I'm done now and all told it is good publicity and free!

Webinar: Gaming

SirsiDynix offerend a webinar about gaming. The description, "Much is happening in the world of gaming right now, and it's not just a lot of teenage boys sitting in the basement staring at a screen for hours on end. No, gaming has tremendous potential for libraries to reach out to new users, offer new services, and help complement efforts in community-building, information literacy, and other areas. - Don't know much about gaming but you want to know how it can benefit libraries? - Not sure what kinds of services your library could offer (especially on a limited budget)? - Are you an avid gamer who would like to offer services but you need help convincing others? - Just want to hear what other libraries are doing? We'll cover all of these topics and more in just one hour. Get the scoop that helps you clarify your thinking about gaming and libraries." Check it out.

ALA Magazine & YouTube

If you have seen this video, take a look. Youth Services staff, I bet you guys could come up with something really good.

ALA Publishing on YouTube

Julie

Article about Podcasting

From Leslie:
Podcasting

Articles from LIScareer.com

From Leslie:

How to Survive and Even Enjoy Distance Learning

Article Index: By Date

Teaching Students to be Information Literate

(9 Mar) Students, drowning in information, turn to Wikipedia or Google
to help them sort through it. Teachers, fed up with term papers based on
sub-standard sources, forbid the use of Wikipedia, and sometimes, any
electronic source.

Both groups are at sea. Neither have adequate skills to cope with the
amount of information available today. Yet both would describe
themselves as Internet or tech savvy.

The article outlines the controversy surrounding ways to teach information literacy.

Photo

See the Admin group as you've never seen them before. Clickety.

Pimp My Bookcart

Photos of the winners of the Pimp My Bookcart contest. View more. I'm loving the phrase "Support Glitteracy".

March of the Librarians

A must see movie on YouTube.

Julie