Google away but ...

Revisiting the Media Battle last September. One of the 'clients' was a public library looking into attracting new groups of users (students, freelancers, etc) while keeping the existing ones. I was shocked during the intermediate pitches to see how students working on this case were almost 'allergic' to books and did not see the point of libraries nor librarians.

Tagged with: media battle, library, google, information skills,

NOS and the public library: the new school of journalism?

A few months ago I talked about the new developments in libraries. The age of just lending books is over. Libraries are looking for new forms of service in addition to the existing services. Possible new services are an art library, a place to meet for several target groups or a central information center. The library is getting some help from an unexpected corner. The NOS (Dutch broadcast association) has announced to cooperate with the public libraries. The newsarchive of the NOS will be merged with background information from the libraries.

Tagged with: social media, library, nos, young people,

Library 2.0

When I was younger than I am today I went to the library many times. The main reason I came to the library was to search for summaries of the books we had to read for our exam. But it was also a place where it was nice and quiet, where you could smell the books and where you could escape the turbulent life of school. Strange enough these visits stopped after I was graduated. All the literature I needed could be found in the library at my university, and therefore it wasn’t necessary to go to the public library anymore.

Tagged with: digital information, library, young people,