Blog U.: Thoughts on DIY U – Confessions of a Community College Dean – Inside Higher Ed.

The above link is a interesting critique of the Edu-Punk movement. Worth a read. This movement is of interest to me as the idea of Edu-Punk  makes libraries an obvious arena where this type of self-directed learning can occur. Remember the seemingly forgotten phrase that the library is the “People’s University”?

If you are not familiar with the Edu-Punk movement check it out here.

As an aside, I learned two new words from the post: eleemosynary (charity) and crazymaking (kind of self explanatory).  Is that DIY learning or what?

From: www.L1BRAR1An.com … of course

Does anybody know of a feature in any of the feed readers / news aggregators which rank each item by “popularity” or “most read” or some nonsense like that? I just had to dump (again) the 1000+ of items I didn’t have a chance to catch up in my Google Reader. It might have been nice to just pick off the top 10 items according to some factor like: “most linked to” or “most commented on”. That way I could get a sense of what I am missing instead of hoping that it will just come around again at some point.

Any suggestions?

I spent the day at the first part of a conference titled – Next Generation ILS: Mashed-up, Fried or Half-baked? It was a great opportunity to talk about how we integrate library services and the interfaces and features we have in libraries. Here are my take aways so far:

• We should throw out “integrated” and replace it with interchangeable or inter-operable. (i.e. we are able to pick and choose from vendors and/or open source each features we want — circ, cataloging, opac, etc. — and plug it where needed)
• The “next generation ILS” is more about new modes of thinking not necessarily new technology. We need to examine new paradigms and dissect old ones.
• Open source is not the cure-all or be-all. It helps but the risks and cost are almost the same as going with a vendor.
• Frustration with ILS systems is common among many libraries  — we need to be talking among ourselves more and perhaps developing common tools/solutions and not waiting for a vendor to do it for us.
• More than a few of us (including yours truly) said to blow up the OPAC completely.

There has been some really good discussions at this conference. Though there is a decent cross-section of library types and librarians represented, I think it would be helpful to have a representative from every department in a single library there to see the organization impact in a more holistic way. Maybe some of that will come about tomorrow. I will try to report back on that. Otherwise a great conference and on-going conversation so far.