I posted this CNN story to LISNews a few minutes ago, I thought I would add my own comments here.
It seems that West Virginia Wesleyan College had a good idea but bad implementation. The shotgun approach of throw tech everywhere and see where it sticks, is a huge waste of money. But there were a few places where technology stuck and worked well.
“But if Wesleyan’s experiment was a failure, how to explain the library? Parker, the school librarian, says ubiquitous computing has brought it to life.
Students consult the online Oxford English Dictionary 20 times more often than they once checked the print version. Wesleyan is part of a consortium of small colleges that buys online chemistry journals, but use here exceeds that at all the other colleges in the group combined. Even traditional books get used more; students have a betters sense of what’s in the library.”
Now just imagine if they had put even more money into the library. A library that doesn’t have a strong technology component is a dying breed. By using technology wisely, the entire library can benefit and thrive.
As a side note I’ve gone back to using w.bloggar, Sharp MT just wasn’t as good.