WML Tech Updates

If you haven’t heard the news, is now being intergrated in a library’s catalog!

“We’re happy to announce that the Danbury Library in Danbury, Connecticut has become the first library in the world to put LibraryThing for Libraries on its live catalog. The Danbury Library—already breaking ground with an active blog and a MySpace page—continues to innovate and experiment. And we finally have something to show people!”

For more information on this amazing project (and for some nifty screen shots), view the whole article on Thingology, LibraryThing’s Ideas Blog.

I also want to encourage you to go straight to their catalog and play with it yourself! It’s very cool!

Congrats to Tim Spalding and his LibraryThing Team and to Kate Sheehan, Danbury’s Coordinator of Library Automation, for making this happen and being a role model for all the libraries who know their OPAC sucks and are positive that things can only improve.

A new survey from Langdon Morris and InnovationLabs LLC shows that the biggest thing that innovators need to be successful is not software, training or case studies, but more time to work on their ideas.

This new study from earlier this year also covers other interesting issues, like the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of corporate innovation programs and the value of informal innovation networks. You can download the full report. For the full article, see: Innovators need more time, says new study

I really think that taking some time to innovate is exceedingly beneficial. It can only help the institution. Look at the extra time Google employees get to innovate and “play.” Some of their best products came out of taking some time to sit back and think about how you can improve, mashup, create, and innovate. Being in academia is a natural place where innovation traditionally thrives and continuous learning abounds. We teach information literacy to help users become lifelong learners. Yet we aren’t encouraged in many of our library workplaces to become lifelong learners ourselves. We simply meet status quo or are so busy just trying to keep up with all the putting out of fires. Sure, in an institution where there is rank and promotion or something where extra efforts are recognized and rewarded, people are encouraged, if not required, to be innovative and investigate developing new or improved services and tools. But at MPOW, innovation is sadly a rare sight, and the committee heirarchy discourages if not occasionally prevents the rush of new ideas from surfacing and blooming. I hope to change that. I’m not ready to go into full details at the moment, but know that I am going to be making a difference in the lives of those I interact with, whether physically or virtually.

Now if I only had more time…