The Information Professional

"[...] free web tools that teachers can use to gather feedback from their students both formally and informally"

 

1- Poll Everywhere

2- Kwiqpoll

3- TodaysMeet

4- SimpleMeet Me

5- Utrack

 

>> Also useful for user / customer feedback!

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

"[...]there are more than a few ways to kill a library.

For example:

√ Stop believing in the libraries mission. Do we really believe in the freedom to read, learn and discover?

√ Spend less time with the board. The ideal public library board would meet 4 times per year and agrees with everything the CEO recommended.

√ Stop talking to your customers. What do they know any way? And on the same topic, stop consulting staff. It is a huge time waster.

√ Don’t worry about the future and how you will get there. Sustainability is not an issue with which libraries need to be concerned. After all, we’ve have survived for hundreds of years.

√ Stop telling the library story. Everyone has heard our story.

√ Accept that the library building is old and you don’t need to keep renovating, painting, and updating it. It is what it is.

√ Accept that just like instant coffee killed the coffee bean, the e-book will kill the printed book.

√ Stop promoting the product; everyone knows about literacy and lifelong learning.

√ Stop empowering staff, and stop training them. They should come to us fully trained.

√ Stop all this talk about innovation. It just makes for more work.

√ And, for heaven’s sake, stop changing the rules and our traditions. It’s annoying!"

American Libraries Magazine, the magazine of the American Library Association, delivers news and information about the library community.

 

Jennifer Petersen:

"Some of the highlights from the 2012 survey include:

1. Librarians remain concerned about privacy and individuals' desire to control access and use of personal information. Ninety-five percent agree or strongly agree that individuals should be able to control who sees their personal information, and more than 95 percent of respondents feel government agencies and businesses shouldn’t share personal information with third parties without authorization and should only be used for a specific purpose.
2. Librarians affirmed their commitment to the profession's long-standing ethic of protecting library users' privacy. Nearly 100 percent of respondents agreed that “Libraries should never share personal information, circulation records or Internet use records with third parties unless it has been authorized by the individual or by a court of law,” and 76 percent feel libraries are doing all they can to prevent unauthorized access to individual’s personal information and circulation records. Overall, nearly 80 percent feel libraries should play a role in educating the general public about privacy issues.
3. When compared to the 2008 survey, the results showed that the responses given by the 2012 respondents generally mirrored those of the 2008 respondents, with data showing a slight decline in the level of concern over privacy. For example, in both surveys, the vast majority (95 percent in 2008, 90 percent in 2012) of respondents expressed concern that "companies are collecting too much personal information about me and other individuals." However those who “strongly” agreed dropped from 70 percent in 2008 to only 54 percent in 2012."