Strains and Joys Color Mergers Between Libraries and Tech Units

By ANDREA L. FOSTER, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2008

Adrift. Dysfunctional. Desperately needing a change. The adjectives sound like descriptions of a bad relationship, but about three years ago Xavier University, in Cincinnati, applied them to two of its departments.

Both Xavier's library and its information-technology unit were in terrible shape. Xavier had hired four chief information officers in five years, its technology was obsolete, its library and IT staffs didn't talk to each other, and students had to jump through hoops to do online research.

David W. Dodd, the CIO who arrived at Xavier in 2005, said students and faculty members wanted three basic things: "Provide the services I'm looking for, in the manner I want, and get out of my way." They weren't getting any of them. full article

Same Shelf and aisle of my desktop:

• Librarians and IT Professionals and
• Librarians and Techies – A NEXUS

Readings between the shelf:

• Google Print vs. The Open Library vs. Project Gutenberg

"Today we saw yet another entry from The Library of Congress, as it
received 3 million dollars to start their own project, from a most
unlikely source, Google! It was suggested at today's Geek Lunch a
motivation of Google's might be to let The Library of Congress pay
the price in non-cash value, for opening the vast intercontinental
virtual prairieland to the virtual settlers, who just happed to be
an assortment of multi-billion dollar cartels, who have felt those
slings and arrows of their misfortune a little too much." Michael Hart


• Best Practices: Trainer, Train Thyself (Part 1 of 2)
  Carole Leita’s Infoblog post earlier this week draws attention to a myth-breaking report from University College London (UCL), the British Library, and the Joint Information Systems Committee: Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future. Her post also makes me think about the current behavior of those of us who are or have been involved in staff training and development programs.
• British Study Says "Google Generation" a Myth; Libraries Must Step Up, Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 1/28/2008 [info courtesy: Sujatha.Thadakamalla @ Aucklandcity Public Library]

Two interesting articles review this British Library Report: Society Is Dumbing Down, by Zubin Jelveh @ ODD Numbers; and We're all information gatherers now, By Jeremy Wagstaff @ AsiaMedia