Last week I decided to start compiling interesting news stories in Tech and Library Science together in one weekly post as a way to share links with other librarians and to build stronger communities.  This is this week’s version: The Zeds Library News, August 8, 2010:

• Right off the top, Tiffini Travis takes her iPad for a test-run at Immersion 2010 and finds that it’s a viable laptop replacement.  Tiffini had to download one or two affordable apps and did work with a wireless keyboard, but I don’t think this is too different from purchasing MS Office and using a mouse with your laptop.  Is the iPad  a laptop killer?  Maybe not yet, but Tiffini makes clear that this kind of tech is what the future classroom experience is made of.
• Bobbi Newman offers a lecture and Q&A on libraries and Transliteracy.  This hour-long presentation, offered by the Nebraska Library Commissions’ NCompass Live, is worth watching if you’re involved at all with information literacy.  Transliteracy is “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.” Bobbie shows how this ought to be squared off in several forms of librarianship. (I know this is something I’m going to write more about in the future.)
• On the (information) literacy front, The Chronicle puts the spotlight on academic blended librarianship by interviewing Mark McBride, at SUNY’s Buffalo State.  Blended Librarianship “combines traditional reference skills with hardware and software know-how and [has] an interest in applying them to curriculum development and teaching”; the threads between transliteracy and IL are all over the place. (Check out the Blended Librarian website here.)
• Rupert Colley wonders how e-books traffic is properly measured today.  What can gate counts actually account for when we encourage more and more people to access library materials online?   This is food for thought since I’m considering how to measure library tutorials beyond website click-through’s right now.
• Peter Godwin links us to the Research Information Network (RIN) report on academic researchers and Web 2.0, which studies in part how information professionals should mediate research and researchers in a Web 2.0 landscape.  (Godwin’s blog should be required reading for anyone working in information literacy, by the way.)

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