EUROPEANA IS UP (AGAIN)

Europeana, the cultural archive of the European Union, is working again. (You may remember that it crashed due to very high demand at its first launch.)

However, I'm not too impressed with it so far. I know that it is new, but I can't see much that would be useful to OPLs--unless you're in an art or history library.

But look at it for yourself and decide.

URL: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA

The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook has suggestions for all the well-known social networking tools, such as Facebook and for a lot that I'd never heard of. If you use them--or if you advise people who do--this is a great tool.

URL: http://www.techipedia.com/2008/social-media-etiquette-handbook/

THE 99 THINGS MEME

From Stephen Abram and Walt Crawford...this was fun! Try it yourself!

Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do: italics
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to - leave in plain font

1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars.
3. Played in a band. (high school and college, clarinet)
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower.
6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
7. Been to Disneyland/world. (both)
8. Climbed a mountain.
9. Held a praying mantis.
10. Sang a solo. (it wouldn’t be a pretty sight—I can’t sing, but I played a clarinet solo)
11. Bungee jumped. (not bloody likely!)
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.(Italian)
15. Adopted a child.
16. Had food poisoning. (twice)
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
18. Grown your own vegetables.
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.
20. Slept on an overnight train.
21. Had a pillow fight. (to celebrate our engagement!)
22. Hitch hiked.
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill. (they’re not sick days, they’re mental health days)
24. Built a snow fort.
25. Held a lamb.
26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Run a marathon.
28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.
29. Seen a total eclipse.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
31. Hit a home run.
32. Been on a cruise.
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. (in France and Germany)
35. Seen an Amish community.(in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri)
36. Taught yourself a new language. (Italian)
37.Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.
39. Gone rock climbing.
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person.
41. Sung Karaoke.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.
44. Visited Africa.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance.(trust me, you don’t want to do this)
47. Had your portrait painted.
48. Gone deep sea fishing.
49. Seen the Sistine chapel in person.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling.
52. Kissed in the rain.
53. Played in the mud.
54. Gone to a drive-in theater.
55. Been in a movie.(assuming that home movies don't count)
56. Visited the Great Wall of China.
57. Started a business.
58. Taken a martial arts class.
59. Visited Russia.
60. Served at a soup kitchen.
61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Gotten flowers for no reason.
64. Donated blood.
65. Gone sky diving. (and not likely to—I hate heights)
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.
67. Bounced a check.
68. Flown in a helicopter. (in Australia)
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy. (I have my first toy—a turtle)
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.
71. Eaten Caviar. (yech!)
72. Pieced a quilt.
73. Stood in Times Square.
74. Toured the Everglades.
75. Been fired from a job.
76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.
77. Broken a bone.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle. (motorcycle yes, fast, no)
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.
80. Published a book.
81. Visited the Vatican.
82. Bought a brand new car. (always)
83. Walked in Jerusalem.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
85. Read the entire Bible. (Old Testament only)
86. Visited the White House.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
88. Had chickenpox.
89. Saved someone’s life.
90. Sat on a jury.
91. Met someone famous. (several)
92. Joined a book club.
93. Lost a loved one.
94. Had a baby. (again, no chance)
95. Seen the Alamo in person.
96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.
97. Been involved in a law suit.
98. Owned a cell phone.
99. Been stung by a bee. (twice)

FREE TABLES OF CONTENTS FROM JISC

“The ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents service makes it easy for academics, researchers, students and anyone else to keep up-to-date with newly published scholarly material by enabling them to find, display, store, combine and reuse thousands of journal tables of contents from multiple publishers.” The service covers 11,140 scholarly journals from 420 publishers, with links to full-text of nearly 300,000 articles. Unfortunately, most of the articles are not free. You can even export the TOC feeds to popular feedreaders. If you register (free), your journal list is saved. I found about 25 journals that cover library issues—mostly in the UK.

URL: http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/index.php?action=home

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO WITH GOOGLE?

Google has a nice list of 19 things you can do with their browser that you might not have thought of. Each has a video demo, too. Here are just a few of them:
browse a book, check the time in another country, check your flight, translate a phrase, stargaze (!), and "settle trivia disputes in the pub" (or the library!). The site is UK-based but the applications are universal.

URL: http://www.google.co.uk/landing/thingstodo/

SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR LAWYERS

Social networking has even made it to the legal profession. The American Bar Association has created Legally Minded. It has news, education, jobs, resources, and community sections and is searchable. You can "find others just like you--our people map lets you connect." Recent hot topics were careers, twitter and "mobile lawyering" (look that last one up!).

Looks interesting, but does the firm really want their lawyers checking out a social networking site instead of creating billable hours? Maybe the ABA is just following the latest "neat new stuff."

URL: http://legallyminded.com/

RESOURCES ON THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Law Librarian Blog has a list of resources on the current world financial crisis. They include source materials from Fordham's Law Library and FindLaw's website, Financial Crisis: From Wall Street to Main Street. Good stuff.

URLs:
Law Librarian Blog post: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/12/another-resourc.html
Fordham Law Library: http://lawlib1.lawnet.fordham.edu/econcrisis/
FindLaw: http://www.findlaw.com/financial-crisis.html

SEARCH ENGINE FOR BIOLOGY

Vadlo is a new search engine for the biological sciences. It was created by two biologists and takes it name from a large fig tree (why?). It consists of protocols, online tools, PowerPoint presentations, databases, software, and cartoons.

URL: http://www.vadlo.com/

LIBRARY AS LEARNING COMMONS

Although this article is about a school library, its lesson is for all libraries.
Burge, Kathleen [Boston Globe], New 'Learning Commons' defies commonplace, Boston.com, 8 December 2008.

URL: http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2008/12/08/new_learning_commons_defies_commonplace/

DO YOU WORK WITH MILLENNIALS?

If you work with the millennial generation (or Gen Y), here is a book you absolutely must read. It is the best I've seen on the subject. The subtitle says it all: "how the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace."

Alsop, Ron [The Wall Street Journal], The Trophy Kids Grow Up, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-22954-5, US$24.95.

SUCCESSFUL LIBRARY PR EFFORTS

Recently I came across two articles describing very successful outreach or public relations efforts by academic libraries. Both appeared in Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, the quarterly online-only journal from the Science and Technology Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries (a part of the American Library Association). They don’t have an RSS feed, but you can sign up for their mailing list which is used only to notify you of new issues of the journals. If you work in a sci-tech library, you should read this journal.

The first article is Science Experiments: Reaching Out to Our Users, by six science librarians from the University of Washington, Seattle (one of whom is now at Dartmouth College). A user survey discovered that many of their constituents weren’t aware of the library’s services, that most didn’t want to come into the physical library, and that the library’s web site was not in the users’ normal workflow. So, the librarians decided to “meet them in their spaces, lure them into our spaces,” and “use the middle ground that is the Internet.” They tried some really neat outreach efforts: setting up shop in the atrium of a building, geocaching, and setting up a blog, a virtual reading room, and a library presence on a departmental website.

Creating a BUZZ: Attracting SCI/TECH Students to the Library! is authored by eight librarians at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta. I was impressed that the library has an Information Services Marketing Group.” This group came up with the following “dynamic initiatives:” “an afternoon speaker series spotlighting exciting campus research” and “T-Paper, a hip, student-oriented restroom newsletter" (emphasis mine). The article has great photos of their efforts.

URLs:
Mailing list signup: http://listserver.library.ucsb.edu/mailman/listinfo/istl-updates
Science Experiments: http://www.istl.org/08-fall/article1.html
Creating a BUZZ: http://www.istl.org/06-winter/article2.html

LET THEM KNOW WHAT YOU DO

This is a wonderful article by Lori Tarpinian [Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, PC, Boston, Massachusetts] in the December 2009 issue of AALL Spectrum (13(3):22-24). The tagline is: “Show management that reference librarians don’t just ‘look things up,’ and technical services librarians don’t just ‘put cards in books.’” Read it to find out great ways to inform your bosses just how much value you add to your organization.

URL: http://aallnet.org/products/pub_sp0812/pub_sp0812_Let.pdf

PLANNING FOR AALL CONFERENCE

If you’re planning to attend the 2009 conference of the American Association of Law Libraries in Washington DC in July, or if you’re even thinking about it, here are a couple of sessions you shouldn’t miss.

Building a Coalition of County Law Libraries: A Place to Begin
Working Smart: Innovative Ways to Do More with Your Day

See the full preliminary program in the December 2009 issue of AALL Spectrum or at http://aallnet.org/database/meeting_annual_programs.asp?meetingcode=AM2009&link=

YOU NEED TO READ THESE….

Not Like Those Other Librarians
M.K. Engle (Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA] was told by one of the first students she met, “You’d make a fun librarian. Not like those boring ones.” She blogs about how to walk the fine line between a “fun” librarian and a “professional” one. This is a line most of us have trouble treading. Her post is very interesting—as are the eight comments on the post.
URL: http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2008/11/20/not-like-those-other-librarians/

What do students want to see in a library newsletter?
Georgia Tech University, Atlanta puts issues of their library newsletter in the bathroom stalls. Brian Mathews has been helping to assess the success of the newsletter. This post lists what men and women want in the newsletter. Here are their top five:
Men: fun stuff, events, study tips, cool resources, new stuff on campus
Women: campus info, interesting facts, events on campus, good books, events in town.
Some good ideas here for your newsletter.
URL: http://theubiquitouslibrarian.typepad.com/the_ubiquitous_librarian/2008/12/what-do-students-want-to-see-in-a-library-newsletter.html

Dublin (Ireland) City Public Libraries’ library portals—two versions
A post (I forget where) sent me to Dublin’s portal using Pageflakes. It is really nice. But it has been superseded by one using Netvibes. Both will give you some great ideas. Which do you like best?
URLs:
Pageflakes: http://www.pageflakes.com/dublincitypubliclibraries/
Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/dublincitypubliclibraries/