On January 25, 2010, the headline of The Onion, an American satirical weekly, read “Massive Earthquake Reveals Entire Island Civilization Called ‘Haiti.’” Unfortunately, this is funny because it is almost true. Many people in North America had never given any consideration to the poorest nation in the western hemisphere until a 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010, made it impossible to ignore it any longer. Haiti’s government has reported more than 200,000 people were killed, a greater number injured, and around 1.5 million were left homeless. Homes, schools, and hospitals collapsed. Even the presidential palace and parliament were destroyed. Before the earthquake, the 2009 Human Development Report ranked Haiti, a small island nation with a population of approximately 10 million, 149th out of 182. Half a million children aged six to 12 were not in school, and 38% of the adult population was illiterate. Less than half the population had access to drinking water.

Politically engaged and disarmingly geeky, Cory Doctorow is one of the better-known faces of the digital revolution: co-editor of the celebrated blog Boing Boing ("a directory of wonderful things"), he is also author of half-a-dozen science fiction novels and a journalist. Born in Canada (he was the popular opening speaker at the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference 2007), the 38-year-old writer now lives in London, although he was in the US, promoting his latest book, For the Win at the time of the interview. This tells a story of teens rebelling against global corporations and is pitched at the "young adult" market. As with all his fiction, the book has been released simultaneously in bookshops and, for free, online. This interview appeared in The Observer in May.

Often a metaphor can capture the essence of a key idea, allowing it to inform us at a profound level. Sometimes, however, a metaphor simply captures us; we are its prisoner. Such is the case with the Information Age.

Librarians have long debated and agonized over their professional identity. To be a librarian is to engage in this angst. With each wave of change, the most recent being digital resources and the internet, there is clear evidence of the decline of the profession and the irrelevance of our libraries. Perpetually on the brink, librarianship appears to be just one advancement away from its elimination.

In the late 1990s, Paul G. West, then the Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Technikon, South Africa, was on an overnight flight from Washington to Los Angeles with a four-hour layover in Denver. Instead of putting on his headphones and ignoring the people around him, he started chatting with the passenger in the seat next to him. The passenger turned out to be the first CEO of netLibrary, a division of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., based in Boulder, Colorado, and an e-content provider for libraries and publishers. As the two chatted, they began to realize how they might be able to work together to create something meaningful. The African Digital Library was on its way.

The most significant problem with education today is the problem of significance itself. Students – our most important critics – are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education. Last semester I invited my students to tell the world what they think of their education by helping me write a script for a video to be posted on YouTube. As part of the exercise, we created a survey measuring student involvement and engagement in various learning activities. On average, our survey sample of 131 students reported that they read less than half of the assigned readings, and further perceived only 26 percent of the readings to be relevant to their lives. Others noted that they often buy hundred dollar textbooks that they never open and pay for classes that they never attend. The video, “A Vision of Students Today” was viewed over one million times in its first month and was the most blogged about video in the blogosphere for several weeks, eliciting thousands of comments. With rare exception, educators around the world expressed the sad sense of profound identification with the scene.

Blogs first appeared a little over five years ago. Since 2003, over 115 million blogs have been created and the number is burgeoning every day. LNG invites you to write a blog as part of its daily output. Roy Tennant writes in many different blogs. This entry is in his personal blog to which he contributes only two statements a year!! He says that there are many reasons why we hesitate but, in the long run, we should just do it! Here is why.

The second research study commissioned by the Ontario Library Association Board of Directors on the effectiveness of school libraries in Ontario is now available. This Queen's University report emphasizes the opportunity and limitations provided by the context within which a library program operates. Context includes factors such as board policy, funding and staffing models, administrative models, demographic characteristics of the school population, principal and teacher knowledge and skill, physical features of the library, history of the school library, and volunteer availability. The knowledge, expertise, and experience of the teacher-librarian are key to maximizing the role of the school library program within the context that the library program operates.

Libraries are not exempt from the nanotechnology invasion. Research on coating paper with zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles for their antibacterial effects is now underway. It is expected that this technology will be applied in the papermaking industry in the next decade, therefore affecting all new print materials in libraries. In addition, nanoparticles are now being used in electronic inks and in the manufacturing of electronic papers, the main components of e-book readers. Nanochips are also being used in our desktop computers, and will soon be extensively used in almost all electronic and wireless equipment. Questions about nanotechnology safety are everywhere.

A great deal of effort has been put into developing systems and other means to manage institutional information, sometimes
without a clear understanding of the organization’s information use patterns. When thinking about the relationship between an organization and its information-related activities, two questions come to mind. First, does the information culture in an organization have an impact on how information is used? Second, is there a way to identify information behaviours and values that denote and differentiate an organization’s information culture?

Each year at Super Conference, one of the most popular sessions is OLITA's annual Top Tech Trends. Luminaries from the world of libraries talk about the coming year and give their prognostications about what tools, services, and cool things will be most important or prominent in the year to come. So, I can't help but wade in myself. Here are my Top Tech Trends for 2029!!