Participating in Digital Community, or Lots of Links to David

I’ve been doing some thinking about all the different digital communities I participate in on the web, so I thought I’d create a list of them. It’s not a short list.
Things I use the most:

My blog (it’s an active community)
Flickr
Twitter (as I write this post, someone else just started following me on Twitter!)
Facebook
del.icio.us
AIM (I’m [...]

New Digital Branch

Some of you might have noticed I’ve been dropping very vague hints on this blog about my library’s website redesign… well, no more vagueness! In fact - how about checking it out for yourselves? Go to webdev.tscpl.org and and see what my web team has been busy creating.
A few asides:

If something doesn’t work, most likely [...]

1000 True Fans - Can We Have 1000 True Patrons?

I just read 1000 True Fans from Kevin Kelly’s blog - great article! I suggest you go read it. And then come back! Because… I’m wondering… can that model work in a library/non-profit/website setting?
Here’s the gist of the idea presented in the article: for artists or creatives to make a living, they don’t really need [...]

No More Kicking

Remember my post from January, Kicking Users Out the Door? Interestingly, after my post (about worldcat.org and a poor user experience I had), I was contacted by two OCLC employees!
They realized that “Goodbye” was not the message they wanted to leave with customers, and asked me where I had seen it, what I was doing, [...]

Kicking Users Out the Door

When you request a book using OCLC’s Worldcat service, here’s what happens after you complete a request - you are presented with this message: “Your resource sharing request was sent successfully. Goodbye.”
What was that again?
Goodbye.
Is that REALLY the message OCLC wants to send after someone has requested a book through their service? Goodbye? What if [...]

Some Thoughts and Quotes about Authenticity

I’m reading Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine III (same guys that wrote The Experience Economy). I love this type of book - the focus is still on Pine and Gilmore’s favorite topic, that of the experience economy. But this time, they have narrowed that focus a bit, [...]

Valuing Users by Allowing Comments

Casey Bisson said this during his Internet Librarian 2007 presentation: “sites that allow comments value their users.” When he said that, my mind started making connections… what a great way to illustrate why the ability to comment is such an amazing thing to include on a website! So riffing off that quote, here are some [...]

It’s About the Community

Do you read Robert Scoble’s blog? It can be very interesting! Here’s a post I suggest you read. It’s a good intro to Scoble and his blog, and he also makes a great point in this post, too.
Scoble says: “… eBay is NOT about the technology. It’s about the community…” (OK - so most of [...]

Community and the Digital Experience

I’m knee-deep in wading through a bunch of articles and books on various aspects of experience design for the book I’m writing on digital experience planning, and I just had an epiphany today: I’m insane!
(No, wait - that’s not it…)
Ok - so I’ve been thinking about experience lately, both for my book and for the [...]

Thoughts on Everything is Miscellaneous, Part 1

I just finished reading David Weinberger’s book, Everything is Miscellaneous (thanks, Brad!). It’s a great read - one that I highly recommend to everyone who reads my blog. You might not agree with everything in the book, but I guarantee the book will make you think.
First things first - Weinberger MUST know some librarians! Throughout [...]

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