We had a lively webinar today with George Needham and Joan Frye Williams doing a two-hour presentation on “Resurrecting Reference.” If you missed the live event, the archive is available.
The text chat had lots of really good information and discussion, so I thought I’d extract some of the links for folks who may have missed them as they whizzed by.
- The Topeka tech guru they mentioned is David Lee King. He has an interesting blog that you can follow.
- An example of a library using Twitter is the Nebraska Library Commission.
- On social tagging, see also Stuart Weibel’s OCLC iEdge 2007 presentation at http://www.oclc.org/research/presentations/.
- Here is an article (in PDF format) that talks about SFSU’s adding of LibraryThing widgets to their OPAC. Another example is Danbury Library.
- Here is the link to the OCLC report From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America
Some questions that were raised:
- Is there … an evaluative mechanism for libraries that are using Meebo IM?
- Is the personal interaction between the librarian and the user/patron/civilian of value? (Versus the anonymity of a service like QuestionPoint)
- How do we handle the civilians who come to use for social connection? (If we are trying to re-prioritize the importance of reference.)
I’m opening up the comments, so have at it folks! Hopefully George and Joan will be monitoring and contributing as well…
