HELLO FROM HOLLAND

I'm sitting here in the lounge of the MS Amadante watching Holland flow by my window (actually, I'm floating by, but let's not be picky). This is day 2 of our cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. We spend 2 days seeing Amsterdam first. It's a beautiful city.

Just thought you'd like to know.

SLIDE SHARE HAS NEW TIPS FOR YOU

If you haven't been looking at SlideShare recently, you should do so.
The newest blog entries are various slide tips--you can even subscribe to them or get them via email.
Everyone needs to create better presentations, so read these tips.

What is SlideShare, anyway? "...the largest community for sharing presentations." It is prooduced by a joint US-India team. With it you can "embed slideshows into your own blog or website, share slideshows publicly or privately, synch audio to your slides," etc. Note, however, that when you post a presentation on SS, you are letting others use it--for their own presentations.

URL: http://www.slideshare.net
tips blog: http://blog.slideshare.net/category/slide-tips/

FORE! NEAT FUNDRAISING IDEA FOR PUBLIC/ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

I just read about Library Mini Golf. You set up a miniature golf course in the stacks--or anywhere else you choose--as a fundraiser. It's already been used by several libraries to raise over US$10,000. Read Jenny Levine's blog post (see below) or go to the non-profit organization's website (also below) for more information. Who knows, maybe a corporate/law/hospital library could try it too!

URLs:
The Back Nine Stacks, The Shifted Librarian: http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2008/09/15/the-back-nine-stacks.html
Library Mini Golf: http://www.libraryminigolf.org

I'M BACK--THEN I'M GOING AWAY AGAIN

I don't know if you missed me, but I haven't been blogging for a while.

My computer died and it took forever to get it fixed. Actually, I wound up getting a new one--a Toshiba Portege M500. It is so light (2.2 pounds) and fast (1.6 gig). But I was out of commission for nearly a month. I could do some things from my husband's laptop, some from my desktop, and some not at all. Ah well, all's well that ends well.

So, to celebrate, we're going on a river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest in a week or so.
What are we celebrating? Our 25th anniversary (August 27), the return of my computing power, and the return of my right foot. (It hasn't really been gone, I just haven't been able to use it. I have stress fractures of 2 toes and they haven't been healing. I was in a cast for 7 weeks--no weight on the foot at all, then in a walking boot for another 2 weeks. Now I can wear a shoe--and drive--but will still have to wear the boot when I walk very much--like on tour. But this is a definite improvement.)

So, I'm back for a week or so, but will be gone until about October 10. See you then!

THE LATEST FROM STEPHEN ABRAM

There have been a few people that didn’t like this article, but I think it’s great. “Evolution to Revolution to Chaos? Reference in Transition, Searcher 16(8), September 2008.

He writes, “In 2008 we are seeing the real action in our world of libraries move form the back office to the front desk. We’re moving from a technology-centric strategy to one in which the real needs of our clients must predominate. Aligning technology with user behavior no longer suffices to ensure success. We need to understand, and understand deeply, the role of the library in our end-users’ lives, work, research, and play. This is critical to our long-term success, and failure is not an option.” [emphasis mine]

He supplies 14 possible scenarios for the future of reference. They are enough to get a person thinking—which is what he intended. I especially like #14—“all of the above.”

URL: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep08/Abram.shtml

TELL ME SOMETHING I DIDN’T KNOW—LAW FIRMS ON THE WEB

Jonathan Thrope posted “Still Loading: Law Firms Lag Behind the Rest of Corporate America on the Web” on Law.com recently. I think we all knew that lawyers are late adopters of technology, but that’s not really what the post is about. He tells us about some very innovative law firm web sites. One is from Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It has animation, blogs, and alerts. And there are more almost as good.


URL: http://www.wcsr.com/

A GREAT USER EVALUATION ARTICLE

“From ‘How satisfied are you?’ to ‘Tell us what matters’: user evaluation at the Wellcome Library,” by Judy Henwood and Frances Norton, finally asks the right question to get good user satisfaction feedback. SCONUL Focus (Society of College, National, and University Libraries) (43):64-65, Spring 2008.

URL: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/newsletter/43/17.pdf

LOOKING FOR UK OR IRISH BLOGS?

Peter Marshall [University of East London, UK] has compiled a non-exhaustive list of blogs in the UK and Ireland. He calls it “a snapshot of the sort of things that librarians are doing with blogs in 2008.” It is published in SCONUL Focus (Society of College, National, and University Libraries) (43):7-15, Spring 2008.

URL: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/newsletter/43/3.pdf

WHY NOT DO THIS WITH YOUR LIBRARY CARD?

You’ve seen the ads for making your own Capital One credit card. Now you can customize your Starbucks card. I think a good marketing tool would be to allow your customers to create their own library card.

URL: http://www.starbucks.com/mycard/