20 August 2006

OF THIS AND THAT: Interesting Sites & Blogs


State of the Blogosphere, August 2006

http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html

As of the end of July 2006, Technorati reported tracking over 50 million blogs. The number has doubled every 6 months for the last 3 years. There are more than 2 blogs created each second. There were 1.6 million postings per day, or over 18 per second, double the volume last year. Read more from David Sifry of Technorati here.



Library Tourguide to Technology

http://www.librarytourguide.blogspot.com

Sandra Stewart [San Jose Public Library, California, USA] has a new blog all about “technology that has implications to libraries and library service.” Her post on 13 August has a great list of technology sites.



Computers, Cell Phones and Multitasking

http://www.latimes.com/timespoll

The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg did a survey of teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18 to 24 to see how they use computers and cell phones. The most important finding, I think, is that these groups definitely prefer multitasking to focusing on one activity at a time. They don’t spend as much time on the computer as we think (most are on less than 2 hours daily), but they maximize that time by also talking on cell phones or watching tv at the same time. Not surprisingly, boys play video games more than do girls, and girls are on their cell phones more than boys. This study has implications for library service—we will not have their complete attention, so we need to tailor our presentations so that they can be followed even when the audience is distracted.



The Public Library Helper

http://www.mei.net/~elsner/

Edward Elsner, a librarian and consultant in Michigan, has put his book, The Public Library Helper: just add building technology, staff, and collection, on the web. It is a relatively complete guide to starting a small public library. The chapters are:

1. Legal (a weird place to start, but there’s some good stuff here)

2. Planning & Statistics

3. Policies (which includes Board position descriptions and other sample policies)

4. Finances (the picky details)

5. Procedures (the nitty gritty daily task and sample forms)

6. Management (really good, but too short)

7. Marketing and Public Relations (good ideas here)

8. Technology (very practical)

Each chapter has a list of resources with it (links and in print materials). The book isn’t comprehensive by any means, but it is worth a lot more than its price (free—except for the 2” stack of paper it takes to print it out). You can’t help but learn something here.



Do you like your info one resource at a time or in a list like this?

Let me know by commenting below. Thanks.

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