A Bloy and his Blog

Thanks to Muzzle of Bees, I discovered a recording of the excellent Ryan Adams & The Cardinals show I attended about six weeks ago. Here’s one of my favorite songs from that night, “Easy Plateau.”

This is an outstanding recording, available in lossless FLAC format, released by the Cardinals themselves. The entire show is posted in the audio section of the Internet Archive: Ryan Adams Live at Overture Hall on 2008-10-05.

What a great souvenir of a great concert. A must for all Ryan Adams fans.

On the morning of my last full day at Monterey, I got up early to watch the sunrise.

read the rest of: Monterey sunrise

I took these pictures at the Monterey Bay Aquarium a couple of weeks ago.

read the rest of: Jellyfish

I took so many photographs while biking the Monterey Peninsula, it was hard to pare them down to fit in a single post, so this is part two. Take a look at the first part if you haven’t already done so.

read the rest of: More biking photos from Monterey

While I was in Monterey, California for the conference, I took a few vacation days to see the sights.

My favorite day off was when I rented a bicycle, and rode all day long on the Monterey Bay Coastal Bike Trail.

read the rest of: Biking the Monterey Peninsula

Crafting the User-Centered Library
presented by Cliff Landis

Why use emerging tech?

• It’s not enough to shove your bad services (such as our crappy OPACs) into new things.
• Don’t do it because everyone else is.
• For outreach.
• We don’t need things designed FOR the user, we need things designed BY the user.

Planning - it takes too long. Too man hoops to jump through, eventually good ideas can just fade away.

The committee approach – can take any good idea and destroy it. Exploits the negative aspects. To many times people ask “what if…” Cliff then showed us a funny YouTube video, Association Professionals Through the Ages, that illustrates how good ideas can be destroyed in such a manner.

read the rest of: Internet Librarian: day three

2.0 Learning and 1.8 Users: Bridging the Gap
presented by Rudy Leon (SUNY Potsdam) and Colleen Harris (Univ. of Tennessee, Chattanooga)

The speakers began this session by talking about myths of the millenial generation.

• They are skilled online searchers
• Are at ease with new gadgets
• Are always connected
• Are effective multitaskers

But as recent news reports and studies have shown, these are not true. Millennials do use the technology, but in a simplified way. In general they are unaware of how powerful the tools they are using can be.

read the rest of: Internet Librarian: day two