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"The main floor looks more like a sleek Apple showroom than a stuffy library. And instead of a Genius Bar, there's an Ask Me alcove, where you can get help on everything from laptops to flash drives. Rather than the Dewey system, color-coded walls, stairs and elevators help you find not just books and research papers, but also media rooms, video game collections and even a 3-D printing lab to create plastic models. But the best part? Built with state funds and private donations, it's open to the public. Welcome to the library of the future."

An article that mainly repeats many current trends in libraries but is notable for appearing in a mainstream publication (Time Magazine) and being surprisingly aware of some new developments such as maker culture.

A slight man with a stethoscope and black medical bag regularly walks through Tucson's downtown public library, helping patrons with issues that have nothing to do with books. Daniel Lopez is not a librarian, but one of the nation's first library nurses.

A positive article about how library use has increased for the public library of Burlington, Iowa. Much of the increase has been attributed to a new building with a single floor for books, several meeting spaces, and in general more programs and events as a result of the heavier patron count.

I couldn't find a way to link directly to presentations or their materials. Probably the most interesting sessions I attended were: Solving the Complexities of Ebook Record Management in Millennium INN-Reach: Implementing Peer to Peer Functionality Between two INN-Reach Systems The Ebooks presentation was about checking for duplication, quality control, and making sure all the records an institution paid for are present and have valid links. There were a lot of good techniques that could be relayed to our members as a group of best practices. The Peer-To-Peer INN-Reach is a new product that allows two INN-Reach systems to share materials as if they were one. It was a done in Ohio as a response after one consortium added two public libraries and began to see their single INN-Reach server overwhelmed. From what I could tell it works well, with each INN-Reach server able to retain it's own loan rules and identity, but did require all the libraries and pickup locations to be added to both servers, which quickly would present patrons with a very long list of libraries to choose from. I wasn't very clear where the super-union webpac resided; whether on it's own server or produced from both of them. The users that were present seemed happy with it.

Describes the use of analytics tools such as Inspectlet, ClickTale, userfly, and more; it includes a nice little comparison table of features. Particularly cool are the real time screenshots and heatmaps depicting page use.

This is a quick walkthrough meant for librarians who are not sure how to evaluate, plan, and implement technology for their libraries' use.  I'm curious as to what our implementation or IT and Web services folks think of this.

Really great article about how to lead change in academic libraries. Apparently, trust and authenticity is the key.  "Building trust through authentic action helps lay the foundation upon which leaders can sell their vision for change." 

This headline caught my attention: "NYU Library Imprisons Students in a Video Game to Stop Them from Killing Themselves." The atrium of the school's main library has been enclosed with perforated aluminum screens, in an effort to curb suicides.

So this is an interesting way for libraries to find funding...

This is just a warm and fuzzy piece for a Friday. But this is really cool what people are doing here. It reminds me of a story a I read a couple years ago about a girl lending books out of her locker (seen here: http://www.care2.com/causes/student-runs-secret-banned-books-library-from-locker.html) Hopefully the city in this case will see that the people want/need a library and turn it into one!

"The consequences many libraries have feared-loud objections from faculty members and financial penalties from publishers-have not come to pass."

Not actually a hoax.  (In case you were, you know, tempted to eat library paste.)

"Libraries' most devoted e-users aren't choosing using the web over coming to the library in person. Rather, they are choosing to do both."

This is a highly critical but reasoned examination of the state of the Library and Archives Canada. The author feels that the national library is losing focus by breaking up parts of it's collection, putting undigitized materials into remote storage where they are harder to access, cutting hours, and reducing staff by up to 20 percent--all of which contribute to the dissolution of the country's past and heritage. What he doesn't offer is an examination of what brought the national library to this state (unavoidable funding cuts or bad decisions to streamline or both) and what can be done to fix it.

A heartening story about how the libraries of Douglas County, CO are bucking the current trend of leasing music from services like OverDrive.  As a result, they negotiate directly with publishers, actually own their electronic books, and are able to display said electronic books directly in their catalog, not just in a ebook-only ghetto (a source of irritation to me).  The author suggests this could start a new trend that might culminate in a loosely-organized, nation-wide system that allows smaller libraries to benefit from the expertise and work from larger systems with more resources, like Douglas County.

Is the Social Web being integrated into our public libraries? This installment in ReadWriteWeb's Social Books series aims to find out.

The Chicago public library now offers 3D printers to any library card holder.

Vodafone Romania, in collaboration with a publishing house Humanitas, launched an ambient advertising campaign, which is simply fantastic. A Victoria Square metro station was turned into... a digital library. The walls are being covered with large format posters, from top to bottom. Bucharest commuters who enter the station suddenly discover that they're in an impressive library.

@Sharla can we use this to promote the new Ebsco ebook purchase. . . we just need a big wall!

The Bexar County Bibliotech Library shows both the optimism but also the problems of an all-digital. 10,000 books is a very small collection, and the library is using a vendor's platform app to supply materials. As one of the people in the article mentioned, this was also done before in 2002.

An outsider view of how Overdrive presents itself as a corporate entity to those not in the library profession, and apparent plans to expand into the school library market.