Was reading through some old posts about the subject recently and wanted to take a moment to recognize and thank J.B. Hill from Southeastern Louisiana University, for being the pioneer of text message reference in libraries. The Librarian in Black recognized him in a post back in November of 2005 and we just want to […]
Category Archives: Digital Reference
Reference Librarians: SMS / Text Messaging Skills Are Not Needed, Your Research and People Skills Are
Reference Librarians: SMS Skills Are Not Needed, Your Research Skills Are As excited as I am to see that more and more libraries are seeing the value of offering text message reference service to patrons, I find it troublesome to read posts and articles claiming that “librarians need SMS skills now.” It’s unnecessary pressure being […]
Library Software and Reference Technologies: Software as a Service (SaaS) Value
While reading a great article by Marshall Breeding about library automation and the state of the economy, I was very pleased to see Software as a Service (SaaS) listed as a lower cost strategy: “[a SaaS] arrangement involves a fixed, annual subscription fee, but it saves the library the costs of purchasing software licenses, server […]
Social Networks, Web 2.0 Services and Collaboration Tools in the Library
I’m fascinated by the new report from Robin Hastings, Collaboration 2.0 and I haven’t even read it yet. My fascination with it is the fact, and I’m not really too surprised given the library industry, that a report has been written to help library managers make a case for utilizing social networks to increase outreach […]