"[This book] shows you how to create a support system that will help your organization use technology more effectively and make your day-to-day life less hectic. This hands-on guide walks you through five projects that, when completed, will give you a comprehensive and usable support system: Conducting a technology inventory; Assessing and supporting staff; Assessing and buying technology; Protecting your organization from diasters and data loss; Managing your role."--Book cover.
Here is a useful and reassuring guide for library staff who find themselves newly responsible for technology training - whether in computer labs, classrooms, or one-to-one with library users. Author Stephanie Gerding addresses the most common concerns of new trainers, recommends proven tools and techniques, and shares helpful advice from many of her fellow library tech trainers. The book is designed to help staff get up to speed quickly, showing them how to integrate expert tips and tricks and leverage their natural skills to ensure excellent results in any library technology training situation.
"Included are insights from working library managers at different levels and in various types of libraries, addressing a wide range of management issues and situations. Not to be missed: comments from library staff about the qualities they appreciate - and the styles and attitudes they find counterproductive - in their own bosses."--Jacket.
Despite global economic disparities, recent years have seen rapid technological changes in developing countries, as it is now common to see people across all levels of society with smartphones in their hands and computers in their homes. However, does access to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) actually improve the day-to-day lives of low-income citizens? This book argues that access to the internet can help alleviate poverty, improve development outcomes, and is now vital for realizing many human rights. This book posits that good governance is essential to the realization of inclusive pro-poor development goals, and puts forward policy recommendations that aim to mitigate the complex digital divide by employing governance as the primary actor. In making his argument, the author provides a quantitative analysis of developing countries, conjoined with a targeted in-depth study of Mexico. This mixed method approach provides an intriguing case for how improvements in the quality of governance impacts both ICT penetration, and poverty alleviation. Overall, the book challenges the neoliberal deterministic perspective that the open market will "solve" technology diffusion, and argues instead that good governance is the lynchpin that creates conducive conditions for ICTs to make an impact on poverty alleviation. In fact, the digital divide should not be considered binary, rather it is a multifaceted problem where income, education, and language all need to be considered to address it effectively. This book will be useful for researchers/students of development, communication technologies, and comparative politics as well as for development practitioners and policy makers with an interest in how modern technology is impacting the poor in the developing world.
The first in-depth look at one of the world's richest-and most secretive-businessmen Though his wealth is certainly no secret, the world's fourth richest man remains an enigma. Paul Allen made his fortune as Bill Gates's partner in Microsoft, supplemented it with questionable, though often profitable, venture capital schemes, and has since invested his wealth in a widely divergent list of interests. He owns the NBA's Portland Trailblazers and the NFL's Seattle Seahawks. Among hundreds of smaller ventures, he is a primary stakeholder in the film production company DreamWorks SKG and formerly held a large piece of the widely despised Ticketmaster monopoly. Dubbed the "Accidental Zillionaire" by Wired magazine, Allen has often appeared to be a bumbler who succeeded primarily through luck and by coopting the visionary ideas of others. In The Accidental Zillionaire, Laura Rich, one of the foremost chroniclers of the Internet economy, unravels the secret Paul Allen, his inner motivations, his vision, and his personality. She tells Allen's story from his days as a fledgling computer geek in suburban Washington state, to his role in founding the world's largest software company, to his battle with cancer, to his sycophantic flirtation with Hollywood and its brightest stars. Paul Allen is a man of various interests and passions, but few if any know him well. The Accidental Zillionaire for the first time reveals the inner workings of a towering figure in the worlds of technology, business, sports, and entertainment. Laura Rich (Los Angeles, CA) is a former writer for The Industry Standard, Adweek, and Inside Media. She currently covers the world of digital entertainment for Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, and The Hollywood Reporter. She penned The Standard's popular "Rich List" report and has reported on Paul Allen for years.
Computer manufacturing is--after cars, energy production and illegal drugs--the largest industry in the world, and it's one of the last great success stories in American business. Accidental Empires is the trenchant, vastly readable history of that industry, focusing as much on the astoundingly odd personalities at its core--Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, etc. and the hacker culture they spawned as it does on the remarkable technology they created. Cringely reveals the manias and foibles of these men (they are always men) with deadpan hilarity and cogently demonstrates how their neuroses have shaped the computer business. But Cringely gives us much more than high-tech voyeurism and insider gossip. From the birth of the transistor to the mid-life crisis of the computer industry, he spins a sweeping, uniquely American saga of creativity and ego that is at once uproarious, shocking and inspiring.
