SLIDE SHOW & COMMENTARY ON PUBLIC LIBRARY ARCHITECTURE

Borrowed Time: How do you build a library in the Google Era is a neat slide show, with printed commentary, on the message our large public libraries send to our users. It's worth a look even if you don't work in a PL. From Wired.

URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2184927

WHAT A COMBINATION--FOOD AND BOOKS!

Cooked Books is a neat blog from the New York Public Library on "all things culinary." For example, there is George Washington's beer recipe (found in one of his notebooks from the Manuscripts Division). I can't imagine it being too helpful for reference, but it sure is fun to read.

URL: http://cookedbooks.blogspot.com

NEW OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL: MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW

If you work in a museum, you have to check out this new e-journal. Museum Anthropology Review "is an open access journal whose purpose is the wide dissemination of articles, reviews, essays, obituaries, and other content advancing the field of material culture and museum studies, broadly conceived."
There are two issues available so far. The latest includes review essays on two exhibitions and "collecting the 'other,'" a couple of reviews of digital exhibits, a review of a DVD, several reviews of exhibitions and a lot of book reviews. I'd like to see more articles, but it's a good start. You can browse by author, issue, or article title and download either in html or pdf format.
This is a really nice use of modern media. I like it.

URL:http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/mar/index

WOMEN'S HEALTH MATTERS!!

There is a wonderful new resource available to find information on women's health. Since it is from the New Women's College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, it has a Canadian focus, but many of the sites are good for anywhere. Its brand new product is a toolkit "to assist the many women who have asked us for help in navigating the often confusing maze of health information on the Web." Titled Women Wading Through the Web, it can be downloaded for free. The Toolkit has chapters on "How to use the Internet to search for health information," "How to judge the quality of a website," "how to interpret medical research," and "how to understand media and web-based health information." There are also many links to recommended resources.

Also on the site are feature articles, quick links, discussion groups, answer center, and more.

URLs:
Toolkit: http://www.womenshealthmatters.ca/toolkit/
general site: http://www.womenshealthmatters.ca/

SUPER ISSUE OF INFORMATION OUTLOOK!

If you're a member of the Special Libraries Association, you've already received the February issue of Information Outlook. If you're not a member, you may want to beg, borrow, or "steal" one. Why? There a lot of good stuff in this issue.

Young Librarian, On the Job: a profile of an OPL at the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Proactive Marketing; Connecting with the Corporate Client --highly recommended
Is There Such a Thing as Information Overload? by Pres. Stephen Abram
Know Thyself and Thy Library So You Can Offer Top Service by good guy John Latham

You may be able to access these articles at http://www.sla.org/io/

MICRO-BLOGGING (AKA TWITTERING)

Joe Murphy [Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA] has written a neat article called Better Practices From the Field: Micro-Blogging for Science & Technology Libraries. It was first published in Science & Technology Libraries 28 but is available on eprints.

Here's a bit of it:
"Micro-blogs are social networks for broadcasting news with a very short character limit in the vein of text messaging. These tools are great for library announcements, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. We can post news such as special events.... Think outside the box by posting news from your parent institution or your library's constituencies."

This sounds like a really neat idea.

URL: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00012752/

OBSOLETE SKILLS

I ran across a really interesting site. It is a wiki called Obsolete Skills and lists 12 skills that used to be necessary but are no longer, according to Robert Scoble. I imagine you can add more if you wish.
The ones there now include:

• dialing a rotary phone
• using a slide rule
• refilling a fountain pen

I'm not too sure all are really obsolete (some people still use fountain pens), but they are certainly less needed. There's also a link to new skills, too.

Very interesting.

URL: http://www.obsoleteskills.com and http://obsoleteskills.wikispot.org

I'M LOOKING FOR REPORTERS FOR SLA CONFERENCE IN SEATTLE

Strange as it may seem, it's time to think about the June SLA Conference in Seattle. The preliminary program is out and, as usual, I am looking for people to report on sessions for The One-Person Library newsletter. I pay US$25 per session for 2-3 paragraphs on the session and its relevance for solos.
I assign reporters first come, first served, so volunteer now. (I will, of course, repeat this post again until I get all the sessions covered.)

Here are the sessions for which I need reporters.
Sunday, 15 June
5:00-7:00 pm
Opening general session, Dr. Vint Cerf

Monday, 16 June
7:00-8:30 am
Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget: Effective CI for the Small Guy
Selling Yourself and our Skills
9:00-10:30 am
Leadership: Building on Your Natural Abilities and Strengths
Working Globally
1:30-3:00 pm
The Next Information Revolution and Our Role as Revolutionaries
3:30-5:30 pm
Embedded Librarianship: Background and Overview

Tuesday, 17 June
7:00-8:30 am
Building Bridges, Creating Partnerships
9:00-11:00 am
All I Really Need to Know I Learned…in Library School?
The New Face of the Special Librarian: Lessons from Solos
11:00 am-12:30 pm
If Knew Then What I Know Now: Tales from the Dark Side
3:15-4:45 pm
Educating the Next Generation of Knowledge Managers: How Library Schools, I-Schools, and the Profession are Meeting the Challenge
Keeping Found Things Found

Wednesday, 18 June
8:00-9:30 am
Transformational Roles: Breaking Rules

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S RETURN ON INVESTMENT NUMBERS

The Friends of the SF Public Library released a study showing that the library returns $3.34 for every $1.00 spent. The study was conducted by Berk and Associates. This relatively modest ROI is quite credible. For more information, see the press release.

URL: http://www.friendsandfoundation.org/press_release.cfm?id=41

IDEAS FOR BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE

These ideas are some of the ideas from Andy Sernovitz [GasPedal, Chicago, Illinois, USA] and his blog, Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That! Via Nancy Dowd at The “M” Word: Marketing Libraries.
1. When you open up to customer participation, your brand belongs to your customers, not you.
3. Turn the bullhorn around. Stop talking. Give the community a chance to speak.
4. There is no such thing as a "community strategy". The community will do what it wants. Go with it.
5. Join conversations early. Negative gets worse if you don't respond. Positive grows when you do.
6. Why pay for product photos? Encourage your community to share their product photos. They may even blog about the fact that you chose their photos.
7. Sounding "professional" does not require you to sound like an ass. You don't need formal language or big words. Talk like a human being. Talk to people online like you talk to your friends.
8. The great thing about communities is that you can hear from everyone. The bad thing about communities is that you can hear from everyone.
9. It's ok to moderate and set rules of civil discourse. You can politely refuse to engage with ranters who don't want to have a civil conversation.
10. Your community will support you if you enable them. When a critic gets vocal, let your fans reply instead of you.
11. Listen to experts but design for novices "

URLs:
The “M” Word: http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/ideas-from-customer-service-is-new.html
Andy Sernovitz’ blog: http://www.damniwish.com/

WHERE SHOULD YOU PUBLISH? (MEDICAL FIELDS ONLY)

Jane (Journal/Author Name Estimator) will help you find a journal that may be suitable to publish your latest article. It can also help an editor find reviewers for a paper. Jane compares your article title or abstract to millions of documents in MEDLINE to find the best match. You can see a list of similarly titled articles, too—someone may already have written “your” paper. Jane is a product the Biosemantics Group, a collaboration between the Medical Informatics department of the ErasmusMC Univiersity Medical Center of Rotterdam and the Center for Human and Clinical Genetics of the Leiden University Medical Center.

URL: http://biosemantics.org/jane/

SECOND LIFE HEALTH INFORMATION

The following links go to various sources in Second Life or organizations active in SL.

SLHealthy Wiki, http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com/page/More+Web+Resources+of+SL+Health+Information?t=anon
HealthInfo Island Blog, http://healthinfoisland.blogspot.com
Second Life: Lists, http://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/healthcare

CHAT WITH A GOVERNMENT LIBRARIAN

Have a difficult question about US government information? Now you can chat with a government information librarian from any of nearly twenty institutions. The project is organized through the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The hours are 8 am to 6 pm, Central time, Monday-Thursday and 8 am to 5 pm on Friday. You can also ask questions or for advice by email anytime.

URL: http://131.193.153.128/

TWO NEW RESOURCES FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

The Public Library of Law is a free site that includes “all the available online caselaw, statutes, regulations, court rules and constitutions from the federal and state governments.” Acesss to the following is through FastCase’s “intuitive interface that woks like popular Web search engines” (read, Google©). The site is updated daily

“All” of the free legal resources that exist on the Internet

An additional 10 years of case law from all 50 states

U.S. Reports: Vol. 1-546, inclusive (1757 to present)

F.2d Vol. 178-999, inclusive (1950 to 1995)

F.3d Vol. 1-491, inclusive (1995 to present)

State cases from 1997 to present

Statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions of (federal and all 50 states)

Commonly used legal forms

URL: http://www.plol.org/Pages/Search.aspx

The Law Library of Congress now offers RSS feeds, consisting of headline, brief summary, and a link back to the website for more information. You can sign up for each of the 4 available feeds or receive the updates by mail.

that leads back to the Library's Web site for more information. You can also keep up with the LLOC by signing up for an email newsletter at http://service.govdelivery.com/service/multi_subscribe.html?code=USLOC&origin=http://www.loc.gov (free registration required)

Law Library News and Events: http://www.loc.gov/rss/law/news.xml
Legal Research Reports: http://www.loc.gov/rss/law/reports.xml
Law Library Webcasts: http://www.loc.gov/rss/law/webcasts.xml
Global Legal Monitor: http://www.loc.gov/rss/law/globalmonitor.xml

KEEP UP WITH THE TSA

Evolution of Security: Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process. If you travel a lot or have clients that do, you should monitor this blog. And you can even express your concerns or ask questions (but there’s no guarantee they’ll listen).

URL: http://www.tsa.gov/blog

GREAT NEW BLOG—THE FRONT DESK SPEAKS

The Front Desk Speaks is written by the Desketeers, the staff of the Darien (Connecticut, United States) Library.

Here is a recent post:

What passes for extraordinary out in the world is just ordinary for us.

Sometimes I lose sight of how wonderful the people I work with are and it takes a patron comment or the observation of an interaction to remind me of that very fact.

Last month a patron told Desketeer Alison that they felt we were the “Jet Blue of Libraries” for our willingness to go above and beyond for our patrons. How nice is that?

So I end the week with a salute to my wonderful co-workers: To the Desketeers in all their fabulous Desketeer Diva-ness, to the Ref-Cadets who take on any and all questions (you would not believe the stuff they get asked!), to the Children’s Room Scouts who I swear must be deaf at the end of the day from all the activity that takes place in their room, to the Techies who if a computer can do, they will find a way to make it work for you, Shelvers who have the most thankless yet important job in the joint and to Admin-ministers who toil behind the scenes and do all the stuff that makes us able to open our doors every morning. Yeah us! We rock!

So next time you walk through the doors, check us out. You will be amazed at what we do.

URL: http://www.darienlibrary.org/frontdesk/blog/archives/2008/02/
what_passes_for_extraordinary.html

HOW MUCH IS YOUR LIBRARY WORTH TO YOU?

Here are the URLs for two versions of a calculator of the library value to an individual. They are designed for public libraries, but you certainly could develop one for any other kind of library.

URL: State Library of Florida, United States, http://www.levy.lib.fl.us/rooms/documents/
worth.htm

Rockingham Community College, Wentworth, North Carolina, United States, http://www.rockinghamcc.edu/MR/
Library_Use_Value_Calculator.htm




Thanks to by Michael Stephens [Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, United States] for posting this on his blog, Tame the Web (http://tametheweb.com/2008/02/05/how-much-is-your-library-worth-to-you/)

TA TA FOR NOW

I'm off to the hospital tomorrow for back surgery. I hope to be up and blogging again in a couple of weeks.

Judy

TWO GREAT ARTICLES IN ONLINE

I want to call your attention to two articles in the January/February 2008 issue of Online (v. 32, no. 1). The first is When Internet is InterNOT (pp.32-36), by Arno H.P. Reuser [Ministry of Defence, the Netherlands]. Reuser writes that the Internet is NOT: international, easy, just like Google, large, objective, or anonymous. This is a good article to send to your boss (and his or her boss, too).

The second article is Put the “Service” in Self-Service (pp.55-57) by Darlene Fichter [University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada] and Jeff Wisniewski [University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States]. “To improve online customer service, be willing to do two things: Act quickly and fail.” They really “get it.” Unfortunately, neither is available for free online.

FIND ACADEMIC PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH BLOGS

Research Blogging “allows readers to easily find blog posts about serious peer-reviewed research, instead of just news reports and press releases.” Fields covered are: anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, clinical research, computer science, environmental, economics, engineering, mathematics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, sociology, and research/scholarship. The blog is “a community-run non-profit organization…created by bloggers for bloggers.” Interesting.

URL: http://www.researchblogging.org/

THREE SITES FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC LAW LIBRARIES
Information for and about seventeen public law libraries in Massachusetts, including laws, regulation, and cases; subject guides; laws by popular name; full-text law journal articles; find-a-lawyer; ask-a-librarian; and podcasts. Good stuff.
URL: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/

SCOTUSWIKI
If you are interested in the US Supreme Court, you should know about this site and its companion site, SCOTUSblog.com. The wiki will have a complete archive of Petitions to Watch since 2006, Supreme Court statistics, a case index, with more to come.

URLs:
Wiki: http://www.scotus.wiki.com/
Blog: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/

Congressional Documents Online
There are over 7000 full-text documents online totally over 1.5 million pages. From Rutgers University School of Law.

URL: http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/gdoc/search.shtml

KNOW THE RULES—OF THUMB, THAT IS

This is a fascinating site. It has “every rule of thumb on earth in one place!” Some of the 151 categories are: advertising, automobiles, business, children, entertaining, farming, gambling, language, management, movies, relationships, restaurants, sports, weather, and writing. For example: “If you don’t want a cat to jump into your lap, don’t make eye contact with it.”

URL: http://rulesofthumb.org/

HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN YOUR PUBLIC COMPUTERS?

The MaintainIT Project, from TechSoup and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has tips and techniques for dealing with technology. There are free “cookbooks” to download. The first two are A Cookbook for Small and Rural Libraries and Recipes for a 5-star Library. Also available are reports from individual public libraries on their experiences with IT.

URL: http://maintainitproject.org/

DON’T TAKE YOUR ORGANS TO HEAVEN, WE NEED THEM HERE

OrganDonor.gov is the official US government website on organ and tissue donation and transplantation. (At the end of January 2008, there were over 98,000 people on the waiting list. In the first ten months of 2007, there were 23,706 transplants made and 12,031 donors.) There’s information here on how to become a donor, how to get on the transplant list, and health suggestions. From the Department of Health & Human Services.

URL: http://organdonor.gov

GO FOR THE GREEN

Greener Buildings has news and resources on architecture and design, building materials, energy use, facility management, interiors, waste management, and water use to promote more environmentally responsible construction. Each topic contains the following five elements: background articles, links to relevant organizations, tools and resources such as audits or handbooks, case studies, and recent news stories.It is a product of Greener World Media Inc., which also produces GreenBiz, ClimateBiz, and other sites. They offer a free e-mail newsletter as well. It is sponsored by various construction-related companies.

URLs:
Greener Buildings: http://www.greenerbuildings.com
GreenBiz: http://www.greenbiz.com/
ClimateBiz: http://www.climatebiz.com/

ALL ASIAN-AMERICAN NEWS, ALL THE TIME

Asian Week is a website with “everything” you need to know about Asian-Americans. It’s produced in Sacramento, California and has a section on (San Francisco) Bay area activities. There are news items, advertising, and columns such as The Small Business Advocate, Capitol Watch, and Voices from the Community. Good coverage of a growing segment of the US population.

URL: http://asianweek.com/

WHAT’S IN THAT CLEANSER?

The Household Products Database will tell you exactly what’s in auto products (like brake fluid, de-icer), pesticides, personal care items (antiperspirant, shampoo) arts and crafts (glue, varnish), home office (ink, toner, pens), home items (air freshener, bleach), yard (fertilizer), home maintenance (paint, grout), or pet care items (litter, flea & tick control). You can search by product or ingredient and records include links to similar products and complete MSDS data. I’m not too sure what you get from this database that’s not on product labels, but if you need more information, here it is. It’s from the US National Library of Medicine, so you can rely on its quality.

URL: http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/products.htm