Stanford Ovshinsky may not be a household name, but his inventions have the power to change the world ...
what lifts Mr Ovshinsky into the league of genius inventors is something rather less common: success. He is the inventor of the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which is used to power everything from portable electronics to hybrid cars; around 1 billion such batteries are sold every year. He has also made advances in information technology (he calls information "encoded energy") and holds critical patents relating to thin-film solar cells, rewriteable optical discs, a new form of non-volatile memory and flat-panel displays. These technologies are being commercialised through deals with Intel, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, General Electric, Chevron, United Solar Ovonic, and others ...
All this makes it tempting to compare ECD's co-founder with Thomas Edison, the great inventor from another age who founded General Electric. Both established themselves early on not only as brilliant innovators, but inventors with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Both arose from humble roots: Edison was not born to privilege, while Mr Ovshinsky's father collected scrap by buggy. Mr Ovshinsky did not even go to college, and credits his vast knowledge of science to the public libraries of his native Ohio. He likes to say, "invention comes to the prepared mind."
Introduce ourselves
- We'll introduce ourselves to each other, talking about
- who we are; why we are here
- what conditioned us to have an interest in public libraries, and
- what our specific public library interests are
Review syllabus and schedule
- We'll review the syllabus, look at the schedule, discuss evaluation measures, and begin to understand what our mutual expectations for this seminar include.
Sign up for class listserv
- Open your preferred email account
- To subscribe to the list, send an email with no message to subscribe-inls843@listserv.unc.edu or inls843-subscribe@listserv.unc.edu
- ListManager will automatically determine, by receiving the email, that you want to subscribe to a list called "inls843", and it will automatically determine your email address and name from your message. The list administrator will then receive an automated message asking for permission to add the new member to the list.
- You may subscribe to the list from more than one email account.
- We will use the listserv a lot to exchange information.
Join the class blog
- when you join the class list, I will use the email address you use to invite you to join the class blog
- you will have to respond to the invitation
- you will also need to tell me the pen name you will be using on the blog
Discussion themes
- We will look at the topics covered during previous seminars and brainstorm about what kinds of topics we might want to cover this spring. As part of the discussion, we will begin to create the schedule for this seminar, looking at what we might want to offer and when. No firm decisions will necessarily be made today, but we will start to block out our time so we can cover all we want to cover.
- As you decide on your topics, start to think also about the date
you want to lead the discussions in the seminar. Send me a note with
your preferred date.
- first come, first served
- depending on topics and dates, you may have the full session for your topic, or you may share the session with one of your peers
- we will try to match up topics so that shared days cover topics that have some sort of logical connection
Some possible topical areas
- Services (i.e., reference, programming, etc.)
- Management (i.e., personnel, policy issues, physical plant, etc.)
- Resources (i.e., collections, print & electronic, personnel, physical plant etc.)
- Financial (i.e., government and non-government funding issues, budgets, etc.)
- Library users or non users (i.e., young adults, children, older adults, or other specific types of user, etc.)
- Other issue(s)
We may well wish to cover many of the same topics as were covered in previous seminars. There is no problem with that approach. There is also no problem with using many of the same references in the annotated bibliography, though your comments about them will augment and supplement those done by the previous seminar members. If the previous annotation is the last word on the topic, you will want to add something new about a new resource.
American Public Libraries or Public Libraries in general?
- While considering where we want to go in this seminar, consider whether we want to focus on the American public library or whether we want to also consider public librarianship in other nations and/or cultures. This is your seminar, so this is your choice.