What ' s the Difference? Hospital or Academic?

Well, I ' ve been napping all weekend, and feel about to fall asleep again. Why so tired? Busy week. The high point of the week was being part of a panel presentation for the Metro Detroit Medical Library Group. It was fascinating. There were three presenters, all talking about the so-called " web 2.0 " applications in libraries. Our slides and handouts looked so similar, some people in the audience thought they had multiple copies of the same thing. To my delight, all three presentations, while talking on the same points, took dramatically different approaches to the concepts.The planned structure for the set of talks was (1) overview; (2) academic library POV; (3) hospital library POV. What actually happened was more like (1) conceptual model of a paradigm shift; (2) real world applications; (3) technological underpinnings, concerns and solutions. None of the panel participants had planned this, or coordinated the talks. It was a marvelous bit of synchronicity, how it all unfolded so beautifully.I found it curious that while I was to represent the academic library, my library is actually very like a hospital library in many key characteristics, especially staffing. You see, I am in a teeny, tiny academic library, rich in collections and poor in staff. As happens in many hospital libraries and a number of corporate libraries, I am the only librarian on staff, which means I am basically on call 24/7. My real-world examples of applying the new technologies focused on using too...
Source: Marginal Space - Category: Databases & Libraries Tags: libraries professional Source Type: blogs