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Yesterday's webinar on Facebook was FAN-tastic. Social media consultant John Haydon had great tips and practical advice for libraries and any group or organization starting a page and building a fan base.

Due to the rise of e-book readers lately, we have decided to purchase and play with an Amazon Kindle. I chose the Kindle since it is the apparent leader in the e-book market right now, but it looks like things might be changing with the increasing number of e-book readers entering the market. With the recent announcement of the Apple iPad, things are going to get interesting.

March 16, 2010, 11 a.m. Pacific time
Register: online

Twitter has claimed its place on the short list of communications tools for nonprofits and libraries to consider when designing online strategies. This webinar will survey the Twitter landscape, explaining core concepts, enumerating best practices, and describing the tools and tactics that exist to leverage Twitter's strengths.

As with many questions about the future of technology, I’m afraid that the only completely honest answer to the questions in the title of this post is probably “I don’t know and neither does anyone else”. So pardon me while I make a provisional attempt to answer this unanswerable question.

I just read a thoughtful article on gaming in libraries from Government Technology Magazine's February edition. It's no surprise to most that gaming has entered libraries in a big way, but still, I continue to hear murmurings of how gaming isn't a proper use of a library, or of a librarian's skills.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invites you to help invent the future of museums and libraries through your participation in UpNext: The Future of Museums and Libraries Wiki. IMLS’s first-ever wiki is a platform where individuals inside and outside of museums, libraries, and related fields can discuss, dissect, expand, and inform the issues outlined in the Future of Museums and Libraries: A Discussion Guide. IMLS will use the knowledge shared in the wiki to help shape the agency’s strategic plan, research directions, publications, convenings, and grant making. The wiki officially launched today, March 3 and will be accepting comments until May 12th, 2010. 

Register online for a TechSoup webinar and learn how to start a program at your library or nonprofit to refurbish computers. Find out how to get good refurbishable equipment donations and how to economically set up an operation that is suitable to your budget and the space you have.

For those of you who have never visited (or heard of) a virtual conference, let me set the scene:  hundreds of librarians huddle in front of PCs in their homes and small libraries across Iowa on a particularly freezing January day with coffee in hand.  All are about to take part in a conference, without going anywhere.  Keynoters Sarah Houghton-Jan and George Needham bookend the day while breakout sessions, poster sessions and even a virtual exhibit hall give every attendee the full conference experience – all without travel, or cost. 

I'm learning to tweet as part of my work with TS for Libraries...we are TechSoup4Libs, if you'd like to follow us! I love that libraries are using this tool to market their services and reach out to their community members. As reported by NFI Research, these are the top public libraries active on twitter who regularly communicate with their community and have a proportionate number of followers to following. Interesting that there aren't many listed on the West Coast.

Chris Anderson's (Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief and author of The Long Tail) articles are always worth reading, but his latest: “In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits," is especially interesting in its implications for libraries and librarians.