WebJunction

Check out the Technology Watch Committee's Watch List.

If you work with technology in a small library, you spend much of your time cleaning the gum out of floppy drives and helping patrons send email to their relatives.  Somewhere out there in the wide world, shiny new technologies keep popping up like mushrooms—but who has time to think about them?  How can you possibly keep up on the latest and greatest when Johnny is headed for the computer room with a mouthful of Chiclets?

The WebJunction community is here to help!  Dale Musselman, a WebJunction staff member with long experience supporting small libraries with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and WJ's Hardware Upgrade project, offers his thoughts monthly on technologies you should be thinking about.  Supporting Dale is the WJ Technology Watch Advisory Committee, a group of technology experts who work in or with small libraries.  Dale and the committee avoid recommending technologies that are faddish, over-hyped, or just too darn cool.  If Dale's writing about something, it’s for one (or more) of these reasons:

• Your patrons will be asking for your library to support this technology soon (if they aren't already).
• The technology will improve your ability to deliver services your patrons need.
• The technology is a wise investment that will save you time and money.

The members of WJ’s Technology Watch Committee are:

• Lori Bell, Alliance Library System/Illinois Talking Book Center
• Rush Brandis, Technology Consultant, Library Development Services Bureau
  California State Library
• Su Epstein, West Haven (CT) Public Library
• Scott Gallagher-Starr, North Bend (OR) Public Library 
• Bruce Newell, Montana Library Network, Montana State Library
• Jill Nicholson, Lincoln (ON) Public Library 
• Ross Riker, Automation Manager, Goshen (IN) Public Library
• Beth Filar Williams, Colorado Library Consortium