From the monthly archives:
Just saw Libraries: How they stack up from OCLC. It has lots of good comparisons of libraries to other “stuff” – here are a few good ones:
U. S. public library cardholders outnumber Amazon customers by almost 5 to 1 (Amazon – 30 million customers; public library cardholders – 148 million).
Amazon ships around 1,500,000 items per day; U. S. Libraries circulate 5,400,000 items per day.
And a completely silly one:
- Librarians worldwide: 690,000
- Population of Bahrain: 656,000
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Just bragging a little… here’s proof I currently have an EMPTY INBOX! I have recently read Getting Things Done by David Allen.
I’m apparently not the only librarian reading through this book. I actually don’t remember where I heard about it – some blog, most likely. David Allen, the author of the book, has a website and blog, too.
OK. I’ll see if this organizational method works for me. The interesting/neat thing I found with this method? It’s geared more towards knowledge workers (translation – librarians), it’s geared to handle “what do I do next” questions (called “next actions” in the book – a little too corporate-sounding to me, but oh well), and it helps blend all your “stuff to do” – work, home, hobbies, somedays, etc – just what I was looking for. For me, all that stuff is mixed into one big “what do I do” heap in my brain, and individual “stuff” doesn’t neccessarily make itself know at the most appropriate of times. Otherwise, I end up being efficient at work OR home, but not both.
So – just an FYI to others looking to organize a little better.
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Take a look at this article, “Brain of a Blogger (found via Darlene Fichter’s link blog).
In this article, two MD types argue that writing a blog is good for your brain. Why?
1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.
So. since I blog AND email (since email lowers IQ), it’ll all even out in the end, right?
PS – for a fun discussion of the silliness of the whole “email lowers IQ” study, check this out.
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Check out the hip Internet Librarian 2005 Conference. The Advance Program is out, so you can check out the many dynamic programs taking place at this year’s conference.
I’m not sure if this is a first or not (but it’s cool nonetheless) – this year’s conference has a Public Libraries track! Personally, I think of this conference as one of the Do-Not-Miss conferences for librarians. Whether or not you consider yourself a techie, you are guaranteed to learn something new, something useful that you can actually take back to your library, and something fun.
That techie/non-techie part is important, too. Sure, there are sessions that will go way over your head (they’ll certainly go over mine). However, a great majority of sessions are given by librarians like you or me – librarians who discovered something new or something that is helping connect their libraries to their customers – and got up the gumption to share about it with others.
Here’s the track – hope to see you in Monterey!
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TRACK B: Top Tech Trends for Public Libraries
This track explores what top technology trends some public librarians are using to reach their users and explores how medium and small PLs can successfully implement some of those new technologies. With an eye toward cost, staffing and the ROI, these sessions offer useful tips, take-home examples, and loads of practical experience. Moderated by Michael Stephens, St. Joseph County Public Library & Tame the Web
Web Trends & Innovations
10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Glenn Peterson, Hennepin County Public Library
Sarah Houghton, Marin County Free Library
David King, Kansas City Public Library
A lively opening to our day! Meet the experts for a discussion of the state of public library Web sites, including what smaller public library Web sites arefocusing on in terms of content, tips for effective Web presence and maintenance, bold design and new technology, and what cutting-edge public library Web sites are doing and plan to do in the next year, including integrated subject guides and a team approach.
Digital Content
11:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Ken Weil & Joe Latini, South Huntington Public Library,
Long Island, NY
Meet librarians who have implemented a successful audio books program in their libraries detailing many valuable lessons about choosing the right vendor, configuring the Web site, promoting, and eventually surveying users. And don’t miss the librarians from the first public library to circulate iPod Shuffles!
People and Technology
1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
David King, Kansas City Public Library
Michael Stephens, St. Joseph County Public Library
How do we manage technology, people, and ourselves in the public library environment where change is constant. King discusses how to hire and keep tech-savvy staff and Stephens presents ways to promote staff buy-in when planning and implementing technology.
Social Software & Sites for PLs
2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian
Jessamyn West, www.librarian.net
Learn what public libraries can do with social software and sites. Images! Bookmarks! Tags! Presented by two notable blogging librarians, this session offers tips and tricks to use in your library for marketing, outreach, and presence!
Hardware Solutions
3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Ford Memorial Library
Bernadine Goldman, Los Alamos County Public Library
Schmidt outlines the best practices for configuring the public computer. From reasons not to “dumb them down” to spyware solutions, these hints and tips offer useful insights for participants’ public libraries! Goldman outlines how to take control of public library computing stations with step-by-step instructions and tips for planning.
Future Tech Trends for PLs
4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sarah Houghton, Marin County Free Library
Joe Latini & Ken Weil, South Huntington Public Library
Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian
Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Ford Memorial Library
To finish the day, join another lively panel of practicing public library technologists for their forecasts and implications of new technologies. What’s next? How do we plan successfully? How do we keep on top of this evershifting world? Take time for questions and discussion to round out the day!
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Glenn at Hennepin County Library commented on my post about RSS:
“Timely post! We just added a customizable library events feed this week at http://www.hclib.org/pub/events/. You can subscribe to events at your local library, events by age group, events by type (book sales, storytime, multicultural) or any combination.”
Hennepin County Library’s website is COOL. They do a great job of presenting info for their customers – this is just another way they’re excelling! Check out their Event feeds.
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And now for a little lesson in HTML. The image on the right is a blog post (good blog, too, by the way). Notice how it’s arranged – first a chunk of text, then an image, then another chunk of text. Lots of bloggers post this way – they insert an image into the text of their blog post. Images within a blog post can even be useful at times (this blog post is one example (hopefully…).
However – look at the image of the blog post. Notice all that empty white space to the right of the image? Wouldn’t that post (and many others on many other blogs) look a whole lot better if the text would wrap around the image? I think so… hence this post. I’m going to teach any interested parties how to do that image wrapping thing:
Wrapping text around an image in a blog post:
* One caveat (I love saying that – it sounds so completely stuffy) – You have to be able to get to the HTML code part of your blog. I know you can using Blogger, but I don’t know if other blog packages allow this. I’m assuming they do…
edit: Of course, it also works best if you first pick the correct size for the image the first time around…
Update: Cliff at Beyond Bullet Points made a comment – his blog posts DO word wrap on his blog… just not in Bloglines (where I read his blog posts). So, checking into that a little bit… apparently, Bloglines likes more normal HTML (align=”right”) but doesn’t like CSS styling (Cliff’s post includes this style=”FLOAT: left for the word wrap thing.
That makes sense – I include a 1 pixel border style in the img tag (which you can see in #6 above) that also doesn’t appear in Bloglines. So just an FYI here… and thanks for the clarification, Cliff!
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Just found this funny. I was using Google Maps to map out a meeting I’m attending tomorrow. I clicked on the Sattelite option (cause it’s cool) and started browsing around, to see if I recognized anything (I did – even found a branch library of ours). But in the process, I discovered two … ahem … different seasons, smacked up against each other! In the upper half of the image, you can see that it’s clearly spring or summer – lots of green things. But in the lower half, winter has hit – lots of browns, and the lake is frozen over (well, the lower half is).
I knew Kansas City had odd weather sometimes, but this odd? Hmm… Obviously, the sattelite images are taken at different times of the year.
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Update: changing the link to Tim Yang’s wiki about “things you can do with RSS.” There’s now 39 things you can do with RSS, and I’ll bet that list continues to grow. Check it out!
Found this on Tim Yang’s Geek Blog: 15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away).
His list of 15 things includes some fun stuff like ebay notifications, weather reports, ego feeds, and software update notifications.
What’s missing in this list would be our library-specific stuff, like:
16. RSS feeds from the library catalog – searches to watch, favorite subject headings, favorite authors, new books, etc.
17. RSS feeds from library databases – searches to watch, etc.
18. That “what I have checked out” thing…
19. Library Calendar of Events feed
20. RSS feed of area happenings, coming from the library’s website
Can you think of other useful feeds?
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I’m going through junk mail right now. I get the BSW Professional Audio Gear catalog, probably because my library buys audio equipment from time to time. Anyway, check this link out on their website (also in the printed catalog). It’s a little section on podcasting, complete with a little article on podcasting and three “Podcasting packages” that include software, microphones, USB interfaces, etc.
How cool is that?
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