AASL Thursday too
I want to propose a thought before I get too meshed with new thoughts and then see if my old thought plays well with new thoughts. Some Librarians are holding onto the book and resisting digital technologies because they think Librarianship is the book. However, if we take a bit longer view on what Libraries have been we see that they have always been about organized quality information from scrolls to books to microfiche to cassette tapes to CD’s to video tapes to DVD’s to online resources to MP3 files to NINGs etc… Out job is to be information specialists and not to defend any particular type of format but to use the format that is available.
On to the Opening Session with Dan Pink. His book, A Whole New Mind, is the Conference Read and I hope to go to his session tomorrow morning early. His talk today was from a factual business perspective. Left brain, logical, sequential, analytical thinking is valuable but becoming less so and replaceable by software. Right brain, intuitive, big picture, empathetic thinking is becoming more valuable and less likely to be off-shored or replaced by software. Therefore, we as Librarians need to use our big picture perspective of knowledge and information to help students prepare for their future not their parents past. One of his six perspectives had to do with empathy. He used some signage examples to show how we Librarians need to re-think our signs from an empathy perspective.
In the Exhibit Hall Block Party I saw (in addition to more people from Texas—UNT, North East ISD, Round Rock ISD, Rockwell ISD, Dallas ISD, more HISD, Duchesne Academy, etc…) fingerid.net from Educational Biometrics Technology. This device plugs into your USB port and has a place for the user’s finger to be placed on a small pad. The pad reads the fingerprint, turns it into a number through an algorithm, and then uses the number to log into the computer, check out a book or many other routine login type tasks. Think how easy it would be for kindergarten students to log on and off the computer if all they had to do was to place their finger on a pad. This little devise might save some time and solve a battle between Librarians and Technology Services. I love technology when it works.
Now I am tired.
