Open Cover Letters

The other day I was browsing through Library Journal’s “Movers and Shakers 2012” (Vol. 137 No. 5). Among the featured information professionals was Emerging Technologies Librarian Stephen X. Flynn who has created a site for job seekers:

Open Cover Letters

It’s an open repository of samples of cover letters for a variety of professions to [...]

Social Scholarship, MLA Style

I noticed an interesting post about citation pop up on the RDC Library Facebook wall today. Apparently, MLA has created a standard format for citing tweets. Learn more here.

APA has this covered as well (explained here).

Of broader interest, “social scholarship” is a really interesting concept that embraces the act of scholars using Web [...]

Everything is a Remix

Everything is a Remix is a four-part video series exploring the production and reproduction of culture. These videos were expertly produced by New York filmmaker Kirby Ferguson.

I’ve been waiting impatiently for months and months for the fourth and final edition of this series to come online and am very pleased to now be able [...]

Rebranding For the Win: I <3 EPL

Last June I attended (and presented at) the NEOS Mini-conference at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.

Marketing Director for Edmonton Public Library (EPL), Tina Thomas, led the keynote session entitled It’s a New Day! Rebranding the Edmonton Public Library.

I was thoroughly impressed by the new brand that EPL released last year. The Library’s [...]

Can Wikipedia Improve Students’ Work?

I was on the plane to WILU 2011 in Regina last week when the woman sitting beside me, also headed to the conference (I am pretty sure the plane was full of library folks), handed me a newspaper article in the National Post entitled Can Wikipedia improve students’ work?

It’s a good read. It discusses [...]

Digital & Media Literacy @ RDC

On Thursday, April 14, I helped lead a workshop (turned webinar thanks to bad weather) at the Annual General Meeting- Spring 2011 of the Alberta Association of Academic Libraries (AAAL) in Calgary, Alberta.

Digital & Media Literacy @ RDC PRESENTERS: Kristine Plastow, Robyn Hall & Teneil Vuori, Red Deer College Library

The ability to interact [...]

QR Codes

AKA those funny looking square things cropping up all over the place …

I attended the Handheld Librarian Online Conference a few weeks ago. QR Codes were mentioned in pretty much every session. So … what are QR Codes and how are libraries using them?

QR (Quick Response) Codes are matrix barcodes that you [...]

Open Resources LibGuide

I recently created an Open Resources LibGuide for RDC Library.

The guide features resources and information on Open Access (OA) journal literature, copyright-friendly media (Open Culture), Open Education teaching resources, and Open Source Software.

Creating an “open” guide can increase patron’s awareness of:

- Resources freely available on the Internet regardless of their membership status [...]

The Human Library

Human Libraries are springing up all over the world. During these events, people become “living books” that can be signed out by library patrons and “read” via sharing their experiences. It is a great way to create stronger social cohesion and understanding among library community members.

I learned about this library phenomenon at the [...]

Spinning the social web

CNN recently published an article that caught my eye entitled Humans vs. automated search: Why people power is cool again.

It talks about how search engine results are becoming more and more irrelevant and spammy. I could not agree more.

When I teach students how to evaluate websites I no longer have them look at [...]