Ref Tech Rob

Photo: Amanda Mills As our economy continues to change, it's becoming more and more important for libraries to offer resources to help people who are looking for new opportunities. As companies continue to shed jobs, replacing them with automation, it is becoming increasingly necessary for workers to rely on their own efforts. Providing co-working spaces is one way libraries can support people who are taking on roles as contractors, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. So what is co-working? According to David Lee King and Michael Porter in “Create a Library ‘Tech Shop’,” ( American Libraries Magazine , March/April 2012, p. 57) co-working “...brings together independent workers, freelancers, small business owners, and others who need workspace. These folks regularly gather to brainstorm ideas, team up on projects, and work in a more social setting.” It can also be described as “...a recent movement of independent ‘workspaces’ that are created for remote workers, location neutra...

By GlacierNPS [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Working together, even to change the world, doesn’t have to involve a great deal of effort. In the spirit of the “work smarter, not harder” mantra, platforms for problem solving demonstrate that mass collaboration can result in successful projects while reducing each participant’s workload. Anthony D. Williams, PLATFORMS FOR   GLOBAL PROBLEM SOLVING: How  Online  Platforms are RevolutionizingSocial Change One of the benefits of Globally Distributed Creative Problem Solving is this ability to share the work of changing the world. In the face of a never-ending cycle of bad news, our natural reaction may be to turn away in defeat, thinking that the problems are too big for us to do anything about. What could we possibly do in the face of environmental and cultural inertia, a billion dollar lobbying industry, and years of poor education? Well, hundreds of pe...

I want to start this post by explaining why yesterday's post was so, well, abbreviated. When I returned to blogging this week, I made a commitment that I would post 60 entries in 60 days. I really want to make it a habit to provide you with a daily summary of what I'm learning in this new venture. The problem is, I'm still getting the hang of coming up with material on a daily basis. Looking back on yesterday, I see that I would be better off firing off a quick thought that I had, rather than trying to analyze an article when I don't have the time to do it justice. With that in mind, I will try to handle those situations better in the future. So, with that out of the way, I would like to get back to the paper by John Seely Brown. Rather than summarize it, I would like to single out one concept that I found to be extremely thought provoking. That would be the concept of a "network of imagination". This relates to what Brown sees as the importance of play...