Autres sciences socialesAnglaisSubstack

Aaron Tay's Musings about librarianship

Aaron Tay's thoughts about academic librarianship
Page d'accueilFlux Atom
language
Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

My blog has existed for almost 3 years, and I have blogged over 130 blog posts, some of them I look back and laugh at how naive I was (subject of a future post), others I was proven completely wrong by subsequent events and yet a few that seem to have stood the test of time and makes me proud to have blogged them. These are my top 12 favorites. 1. What are mobile friendly library sites offering?

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

Roughly a year ago in Unfinished blog posts - which ones would you like to see? , I solicited feedback on which of my unfinished drafts that you would like to see. Since then I pretty much finished all of them off. Here I am back again looking into my drafts and picking ones that have potential to be converted to a full blog post.

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

I wrote about different ways to add the ezproxy stem to url almost 2 years ago but the bookmarklet method has always being the most popular method used by libraries to allow members access to articles via the library's subscription even when off campus.

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

Like many academic librarians, I do various types of presentations, orientations and classes to students. Some students might think we librarians are out of touch that we librarian just use our library catalogues and subscribed databases and know little of Google/Wikipedia etc. As such I always try to mention some "real-world" scenarios to signal that I am well aware of the strong google/wikipedia tendencies of well pretty much everybody.

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

I was reading Bohyun Kim's guest blog at ACRLOG which talked about how users generally don't want to come for library instruction classes but want to learn tools like LibX that speed up searches, and she asked me what I thought of it. I replied that I felt she was spot-on, having experienced the same but said it was a bit depressing.

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

Librarianship is a difficult road. I find myself often torn between idealism and cynicism, caught between passion and frustration. Talking to other librarians, I see the same in them. Libraries really have so much potential to make a difference and yet it seems obstacles in our path often seem insurmountable.

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

As mentioned in my last post, I recently presented at the online Library 2.011 conference. Talking a little about how we scan the net for mentions of my library , the results of such scans and how, when we actually respond and reactions of users. Proactive scanning Twitter and web.

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

While many people were slightly disappointed with iPhone 4S, the one feature that was considered cool and perhaps the main selling point is Siri , the intelligent assistant that among other tasks reads your email, manages your schedule, calls/texts your contacts etc. Still, will people find it strange to speak commands out-loud in public? Is Siri smart enough most of the time or will it be frustratingly wrong most of the time?

Autres sciences socialesAnglais
Publié
Auteur Aaron Tay

Steve Jobs first pitched for the iPhone at MacWorld 9 Jan 2007. Here is the original transcript and below is the video of the master at work. There Steve claimed to be reinventing the phone. How would he reinvent the library catalogue? "This is a day I've been looking forward to for almost 140 years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.