David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Your Digital Branch: Much More than Your Website

By

What's a Digital Branch?

I have a new article posted over at the Informed Librarian website that’s focused on your library’s digital branch.

In the article, I talk about three things:

  • What is a digital branch
  • What should be included in today’s digital branch
  • The needs of a digital branch

Go check it out! Also, make sure to check out the other content at the Informed Librarian. Pretty cool online publication. Here’s what they do:

“THE INFORMED LIBRARIAN ONLINE (ILO) is the current awareness service that keeps you up-to-date with your professional reading and your profession. Each month we bring you the most current contents from over 290 valuable domestic and foreign library and information-related journals; and ILO does so much more! It offers you an easy, timesaving way to stay informed and abreast of all library trends, and is preferred by library and information professionals around the world.”

Enjoy!

Web trends to Watch in 2017

By

Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking as part of the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference, developed by the Nicolet Federated Library System (find out more here).

I talked about emerging web design trends for 2017. It was a fun talk … and the talk is available online!

So here are some links to the talk:

And here’s the embedded version – so click play and listen/watch!

Web Trends to Watch in 2017 from Nicolet Libraries on Vimeo.

Have a web design trend that’s not in this list? Please share!

Interesting Tidbits from Internet Librarian 2016

By

I always have a great time at Internet Librarian – meeting up with friends, giving talks, and attending sessions to learn something new or different.

That certainly happened this year! I have a longish list of things to explore in a bit more detail (websites, books, and ideas).

Here’s what I found interesting as I attended some of the talks:

Day 1 Keynote – Indi Young (at www.indiyoung.com):

She gave a talk about Deep Understanding. Not sure I can explain that well, though it was interesting. But I loved some of her major points, like her take on active listening (which helps to get to deep understanding):

  • Act like a tour guide. You don’t ask about the thing the tour guide didn’t bring up. You ask questions about the stuff she does bring up.
  • Break through the surface to get to the depth (reasoning, reactions, guiding principles, etc).
  • Find out why. Toddlers are not embarrassed about what they don’t know.
  • We don’t bring our thoughts to the session. We dive into the depths of the other person’s thoughts.
  • Start with scope. What went through your mind as you <tried to accomplish your purpose>?
  • Ground it. Use and event that happened. I.e., what about the last time, the first time, a memorable time…
  • No list of questions needed. Just follow the last set of details.
  • Avoid judgements and contempt. Her pain is real, even if you don’t agree.
  • Rapport – DO support the participant emotionally.
  • No notes, no analysis, no problem-solving.
  • Attempt to banish assumptions.

I know – hard to do, right?

Gary Price – Super Searcher apps, Sites, & Tools.

Gary often gives a talk about new search tools and interesting apps. Here are some of the things he mentioned this time:

  • – all the tools he talked about can be found on this web page.
  • Zoho – they host one-off web pages for free. Example – the page mentioned above with all the tools listed.
  • Webrecorder – create high-fidelity, interactive recordings of any web site you browse – sorta like a DVR recording of what you can browse. You can also take screenshots. Free tool.
  • Audiosear.ch – full text search and recommendation API for podcasts and radio. You can even set up alerts on words and phrases that appear in a podcast. Cool.
  • C-SPAN – their search tool.a lot of author interviews. Every word spoken is keyword-searchable. Uses CC for the search.
  • Notablist – searches email campaigns!
  • PhotoMath – solves math problems via the camera. And does it really well. It even “shows the work!” This would have been handy in algebra class…
  • and quite a few other tools and apps. Check his list out!

Brendan Howley – Day 2 keynote speaker.

He talked about story telling. It was an interesting talk, especially since I’ve been thinking about video again in a big way.

  • He mentioned this idea – ask the funniest local person to make a short video about the library. It’s bound to a a fun one!
  • He also emphasized this – keep making and publishing content! He said “Good content now is better than perfect content on Friday.”
  • He also had a valid point about mobile users on your website. You need to check your website analytics to see what your bounce rate is for mobile users. Your goal is a bounce rate of under 30%. Most libraries have a 70% bounce rate, which means that they are using the mobile app or website once and not coming back.

I got a lot more than this out of the conference – this is just what I captured. Hope to see YOU there next year!

Image by FoodLibrarian

Is Your Library Mobile-Friendly?

By

Here’s my newest article over at Emerald Group Publishing.

This month, I focused on an easy way to make sure your website works for your mobile customers.

Actually using your website, as a customer, via your smartphone.

Pretty simple idea, yet one that we often overlook. Use your website like your mobile customers would. Not for a minute or two – actually do it for a good chunk of time, like a week.

See if it works. See if the experience is where you want it to be. See if you can do everything that you can do using the desktop version of your website.

And if you discover that the mobile version of your website isn’t where you want it to be? Well … there’s your next web project!

Go read my article, and let me know what you think!

Pic by me, over at Instagram.

 

Handy Instagram Linking Tip

By

I just discovered this handy tip for direct linking to Instagram images. Here are two examples of one of my Instagram images. The first one is using Instagram’s Embedding tool:

Stormy day

A photo posted by David King (@davidleeking) on

Using this, you get the whole thing – the image, the description, the white border around the image, etc. And it’s way too big.

But – if I just want to use the image in a blog post – without all the other stuff – just add /media/ to the url of the image (discovered at stackoverflow). Here’s what you get when you do that:

Just the image – nothing else. You can even choose from three images sizes (thumbnail, medium, and large) like this – /media/?size=t (“t” for thumbnail).

Cool!