Reading Roundtable

Directors and staff will be participating in a Reading Roundtable on July 30 from 10-noon in a WIMBA classroom. This is hosted by Roy Kenagy. The first book is "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath. If you're interested in rethinking how you market and promote the library this is a great book to read! I'm excited to hear how others will apply what they learn in this book to real life in the library! There will be lots to talk about. One of the things that I think is especially applicable to the library is what the Heath's call 'The Curse of Knowledge'. That is, we are often so close to a subject (i.e. the library and it's jargon) that we forget that others don't have the same knowledge that we do. We assume people understand everything that we do, so we leave out information that would be critical to understanding our mission, our programs, or even our very reason for exsisting. Lots to think about. Even if you aren't participating in this roundtable, I would encourage you to take the time to read this book!

Directors Retire

Darrell and Dave have both left NWILS Board of directors. They'll be missed. We will see Dave hanging out, though ,at the Sioux Center Public Library.

Library 2.0 for Every library

Here is a list of ten things that every library, no matter what their size, can do to implement 2.0 ideas for their patrons and community. These are low risk, low cost, low effort and common sense enhancements:

1. Have Firefox on all your public computers.

2. Add Del. ici.ous tags for all your bookmarks. No matter what, no matter where all your favorites will be right there. You can even point your patrons to them!

3. Have RSS feeds for lib news and programs so tech savy patrons get automatic updates when you introduce new things!

4. Encourage your staff to BLOG

5. Design a way to do info sharing with staff through internet BLOGs or Wikki's.

6.Collaborate with partners using Google Docs or Picasa (i.e. other libraries in your county)

7. Blog from your web page and allow public comments.

8. Keep a flickr page of interesting library pictures.

9. Allow IMing, gaming and YouTube on your public computers.

10. Engage your teens with the technology you're using.

Thanks to the Other Librarian" at wordpress.com for these great tips.