Bridging the divide

Jessamyn C. West has written a wonderful book titled Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide. I'm not even half way through it yet, and I've already gleaned more ideas than I can use in a year. One thing I know for sure, I'm going to have to find a way to cram more classes into the schedule than just the one per week, plus the Monday morning drop-in, that I do now. There may be only one or two people in each class--we're a small community and, in my experience with them, no one person has quite the same computer needs as another person. I'm also hamstrung by the lack of a real computer lab. We have laptops, but it's proven to be very difficult to keep them in a uniform state between users. I wish I could just have half a dozen laptops that were never used for anything except classes. I may have to make such an investment with my own nickel. Certainly the prices have come down to the point where an idea like that isn't totally off the wall.

In addition to all the wonderful ideas in the book, Jessamyn has even shared many of her teaching materials. I love librarians! Buy the book. You won't regret it.