Have librarians got Google Goggles on? Are we not using other search engines/strategies as much as we used to for general internet searching? I’m not really thinking about specific database here – more just what do we turn to for searching the free internet. iLibrarian had a post recently 100+ Alternative Search Engines You Should [...]

The Third Western Australian Library Unconference will be held on Saturday 3 October 2009 at Central TAFE, Royal Street, East Perth. Thank you to Central TAFE for donating the venue.   Again we are aiming for it to be no cost to participants – except time, energy, communication, expertise and engagement. . Registrations for the [...]

ALA Conference 2009 has just finished and one of the highlights to come out of it was the Top Tech Trends. The panelists attending were John Blyberg, Geert van den Boogaard, Clifford Lynch, Eric Lease Morgan, Roy Tennant and Joan Fryne Williams. Karen A. Coombs was a planned panelist unable to attend due to illness.  [...]

Along with tattoo artists, cameramen, makeup artists, hair stylists and nannies we are working in jobs that are better than most people think according to an article in Focus. (20 jobs that are (much) better or worse than you think). The reason cited is that our hours are ‘reasonable’ even if we don’t work in [...]

The ALIA Public Libraries Summit opened today with a keynote from Senator the Hon Ursula Stephens, Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and Parliamentary Secretary for the Voluntary Sector. The purpose of the Summit is to demonstrate the many ways public libraries play a central and valued role in strengthening communities, developing people and achieving social [...]

…and we want to hear from you! After the IFLA decision last week, it’s been wonderful to see so much enthusiasm,  ideas and creative suggestions for a 2010 event flying around the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook and the e-lists.  Thanks to LINT for a great post that kicked off some discussion here. As ALIA President Jan [...]

ALA Annual Conference 2009 is finishing up in the US on the 15th, after 8 days of action packed library fun in Chicago.  If you have missed seeing some of the reports coming out, I can highly recommend you check out the following, for conference blogging and reports. ALA Annual Conference 2009 Website Library Journal [...]

The Library 2.0 Gang is running a competition for the best library mashup idea.  It doesn’t have to be a working prototype, just an idea of how libraries could use mashups to provide awesome service to their users.  “The only restriction being that it must include library data or functionality somewhere within it.” The competition [...]

[update: ALIA has just set up a wiki to explore possible alternatives for 2010] [update: official word (Prez) from ALIA, and from the Vice Prez] Interesting news to hand in recent hours. Alas IFLA has decided to cancel the Brisbane Conference in 2010. They cite a bunch of reasons, primarily centred around the “Global Financial [...]

Fun, engaging, and useful – Mash Oop North, held today at the University of Huddersfield managed to combine all three. Originally aimed at librarians exploring mashups in the UK’s North, the event sold out in 24 hours (world record?) and attracted around 70 librarians and affiliated types from around the country. As one does, I [...]