Louise Alcorn

Kudos to Louise Alcorn and Kami Griffiths for making the potentially dull topic of policies anything but dull! Today’s 30-minute webinar provided a lot of food for thought in a short amount of time. I was familiar with Louise and her work before the webinar because she literally wrote the book on wireless networking in libraries. During the webinar, however, I also discovered that she and my friend and fellow Johnson County (KS) resident Josh Neff are old pals! Josh was a webinar participant today, too, and told me that he and Louise went to summer camp together many, many years ago and recently got in touch again on Facebook – ah, it’s a wonderfully small and socially networked world!

Do you have wireless, want wireless, or feel like you could better explain the ins and outs of wireless usage to your patrons?

If you answered yes, maybe, or sorta to any of these questions, MaintainIT has a 30-minute solution for you. TODAY.

In a recent comment to our latest poll, Dave Jackson offered his thoughts on his favorite tools (or lack thereof) for learning:

If you haven't yet seen Louise Alcorn's wireless checklist, check it out now, and please... steal it! If you have a copy of the December issue of American Libraries magazine, it's reprinted on page 29.

And hip, hip, hooray that Louise's wise words can reach more people! Louise is a marvel, and we're always happy to share her thoughts, and pleased as punch that American Libraries thought so too. Nice work, Louise!

Louise Alcorn, librarian, author, and wireless expert extraordinare, recently responded to a blog comment worth talking about.

In the spirit of this spooky season, I wanted to address some Wireless Horror Stories – potential issues and problems with wireless. Remarkably, I’ve had a hard time finding stories of real horror. Especially in the last few years, during which time wireless has become more prevalent and therefore implements more smoothly. The usual response from libraries has been “the wireless project went just fine." So much for horror...

Use this "Quick Look" checklist to make sure you’re covering your bases when it comes to crafting a wireless policy for your library. For more information on wireless policies, check out an earlier post on the topic.

Recently I wrote a post about marketing your wireless service. It sparked a number of excellent comments, including some questions on policy. I decided they were worth answering in a longer form, including some helpful tips cribbed from my book on Wireless Networking for Libraries which I thought would be helpful.

“Yeah, we have wireless at our library…but we don’t tell anyone about it!”

When I began looking at wireless for my library, I heard this more than once from other libraries. I found this very odd. If you had a new storytime format or some new DVDs, would you keep them a secret?