FUN SITES

The following are from the Jessamyn West’s Tech Tips for Every Librarian column in the March 2009 Computers in Libraries. Enjoy.

URLs:
To see if Google is down: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
This one is just fun, not useful: http://didyoutryrebooting.com/
Handy: http://whatismyipaddress.com/

WORLD BOOK FOR STUDENTS

The World Book now calls its Reference Center World Book Student and has added a timeline builder, a biography center, and hundreds of new videos and pictures to support student research projects. Students also now have the ability to establish their own research accounts. World Book Student still includes all the articles from the print versions of the World Book Encyclopedia, plus thousands of additional articles, learning resources, and research tools such as trivia quizzes, science projects, cyber camp, and special features such as African American Journey, Climates Around the World, and an Atlas with hundreds of maps.

You can subscribe for as little as US$49.95 per year. What a deal!

Disclosure: I grew up with and learned to read from the print World Book and it holds a special appeal for me.

URL: http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students

WEBJUNCTION OFFERS COURSES, SOME CAN BE FREE

Webjunction has a nice list of Library Management Competencies. They also provide links to related courses and dynamic resources that will help users build knowledge and skills and increase on-the-job effectiveness.

The courses are only about US$40 each, but they can be free if you go through one of the partner organizations. Partners include the state libraries of Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington and the Association of Rural and Small Libraries (memberships available for US$9 to $59—yes, nine dollars for students, retirees, friends, trustees, volunteers, and library staff making $14,999 or less per year).

Check out both the competencies (skewed heavily to public libraries) and the courses.

URLs:
http://www.webjunction.org/catalog/coursecatalog/competencies
http://www.webjunction.org/partners

INTERESTING NEW SEARCH ENGINE

Lexiquo is a linguistically-oriented search engine, originally written for the German language, but now available for French, English, Spanish and Italian. It automatically suggests alternate search words based on linguistic variations and parsing of your search terms. For example, using child in the search box will cause the software to suggest children. Its suggestions depend on the language you are using.

I’m not sure it’s better, but it sure is interesting.

URL: http://www.lexiquo.net

BIALL HAS AN OPL GROUP ON LINKEDIN

The British and Irish Association of Law Libraries has set up a group on LinkedIn just for solo librarians. Great idea!

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/1811987/

And don't forget to check their website/blog at http://biallsolos-omb.blogspot.com/

TEN WAYS YOUR PUBLIC LIBRARY CAN SAVE YOU MONEY

Here is a great way to publicize the benefits of a public library. It's from the UK, but you can adapt it for your own situation. If you're not in a public library, why not create something similar?

There's also a link to an Excel spreadsheet from a local UK library that lets you compare the cost of borrowing to the cost of buying information materials.

URLs:
10 ways: http://www.mla.gov.uk/news/press/releases/2009/Money%20saving%20tips
spreadsheet: http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/consumption/groups/public/documents/general_resources/NCC062825.xls

And a great promotion line.........Your public library isn't free--it's prepaid by your taxes, so use it!

PHOTOS OF REFERENCE DESKS

If you are interested in what other libraries' reference desks look like, check out the Library Reference Desks group on flickr. Fascinating.

URL: http://www.flickr.com/groups/referencedesks/

FIND ROYALTY-FREE PHOTOS, ILLUSTRATION, VIDEO, AUDIO, AND FLASH FILES

'iStockphoto "is the Internet’s original member-generated image and design community. Find your inspiration on the world's leading royalty-free stock destination. Search for over 4 million photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files. There are more than 66,000 artists from all over the world contributing their artwork to iStock."

"Purchase credits and spend them whenever you download a file. The credit cost of any file depends on its size or complexity. Pay-as-you-go credits expire one year from the date you buy them and start at $18 for 12 credits. Buy royalty-free files for as low as: $1 X small, $3 small, $21 XX large."

I searched for “library” and found 5664 result, for “librarian” and found 409, and for “corporate librarian” and found 78 (it automatically converted the search to “business AND librarian.

This could be very useful when you need a photo and can’t take time to find the owner and negotiate royalties.

URL: http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php

A SKETCHY DATABASE

An interesting new database has been announced. "Sketchory is a collection of 250,000 drawings...from SketchSwap.com. We opened Sketchory for all of you to rate, tag, search and re-use the drawings by keeping to the [Creative Commons] license which includes commercial use but requires attribution, among other things, with the additional prerequisite that you don't share over 1000 sketches."

The "we" refers to three Germans: Dominik Schmid, Philipp Lenssen, and Nikolai Kordulla.

You could use this to find drawings to put in a book, a blog, or slides for a presentation. Most are pretty crude, but the price is right (free).

URLs:
http://sketchory.com
http://www.sketchswap.com/about.html

WHAT DOES A LIBRARIAN DO? WHY DID YOU BECOME ONE?

Ivan Chew [National Library Board, Singapore] has written a bunch of good posts on what a librarian does and why he became one. They are all on his blog, Rambling Librarian: Incidental Thoughts of Singapore Liblogarian, and are worth saving for when you get a question from a customer or future library student.

He adds the following disclaimer: “I am not the only public service librarian around. What I do is not the definitive Public Librarian job scope. I do not blog everything about what I do as a public service librarian (which means there’s a whole lot more about public libraries that I’ve not blogged about here).”

Questions about becoming a librarian (September/October 2005):
1. A rambling introduction, http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/09/questions-about-becoming-librarian.html
2. What does a librarian do? http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/09/questions-about-becoming-librarian_27.html
3. How does one become a librarian? http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/questions-about-becoming-librarian.html
4. What makes a good (public service) librarian? http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/questions-about-becoming-librarian_11.html
5. Why do people choose to become librarians? http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/questions-about-becoming-librarian_12.html
6. Why I decided to work for library instead of a bookstore company? http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/questions-about-becoming-librarian_14.html
7. Why do people remain as librarians? http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/10/questions-about-becoming-librarian_16.html

What I would tell the librarians. (October 2006, “The library as a Business; Public Libraries and social media; What should libraries do, if books become digital?; How can libraries use social media to attract and engage young people?; Social media is a reality”), http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-i-would-tell-librarians.html

Being a Librarian vs. Job title=Librarian (April 2006), http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/04/being-librarian-vs-job-title-librarian.html

Professionalism is an attitude, not a definition (June 2004), http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2004/06/professionalism-is-attitude-not.html

SLA WIKIS FOR OPLS

1. SOLO Librarians Division, http://wiki.sla.org/display/SLADSOL/Welcome
It is new and there isn’t much there yet. Of course YOU can change that by adding content: resources that you think other solos would like to know about, for instance.
2. SLA Toronto Chapter Solos, http://wiki.sla.org/display/Toronto/Solo+Librarians
definitions, backgrounders (links to articles), links to other sites, survey results, and other resources. VERY useful!
3. Other SLA wikis can be found at http://wiki.sla.org/dashboard.action You will have to register, but it’s free. Subjects: 2009 Conference, 23 Things (Web 2.0), divisions and chapters, SLA Centennial, competencies, information ethics, new info pros, leadership, unconference (sharing ideas, events), wikis 101 and wiki sandbox (try wikis for yourself).

NEW NAME FOR SLA

I've come up with a new name for SLA....
Librarians
(and)
Information
Professionals
Striving
To
Improve
Communication
(and)
Knowledge

(sorry guys.......)

INTERESTING STATISTICS ON USA GENERATION

According to Sydney Jones, Research Assistant, and Susannah Fox, Associate Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the vast majority of adults on the internet are between 18 and 54. The largest adult demographic on the internet is Gen Y (ages 18-32) at 30 percent, closely followed by Gen X (33-44) at 23 percent and Young Boomers (45-54) at 22 percent. My generation, the “Older” Boomers (hate that designation), 55-63 (yikes! I’m almost out of the boomers), make up only 13 percent of adults online. (The rest of the groups are the Silent Generation, 64-72, at 7 percent and the G.I. Generation (73+) at 4 percent.

I bet if you did the same study for librarians the older and younger boomers would fare better….
Check out the entire report. While you're in the vicinity, check out other stuff from the Pew Charitable Trusts, especially the Pew Research Center.

URL: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Generations_2009.pdf
Pew Charitable Trusts home page: http://www.pewtrusts.org/default.aspx
Internet & American Life: http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_category.aspx?id=48
Pew Research Center: http://pewresearch.org/

AALL WIKI: TOOLS FOR SUCCESS IN TODAY’S ECONOMY

The American Association of Law Libraries unveiled its new Wiki of “resources to succeed in today’s economy.” Articles are divided into 4 categories. Career tools includes article on combating burnout, continuing professional education, job seekers, leadership training, networking and salary negotiation. Financial tools cover budgeting, general financial tools, funding, negotiation, and open access. Management tools include conflict resolution, customer service, hiring and recruiting law librarians, law firm library management, general management tools and managing, and promoting the law library. Finally, there is a section of public relations tools. Most so far are from Julia O’Donnell, AALL Director of Publications, but you can join the wiki and contributed items yourself.

URL: http://aallnet.pbwiki.com

MYERS-BRIGGS ANALYSIS OF OPL PLUS

Stephen Abram posted about the Typealyzer tool that determines what personality type your blog is. Mine came out INTP--The Thinkers, which sort of matches me, I hope.

"The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

"They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about."

URL: http://www.typealyzer.com/
Abram's post: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/01/blog_personalit.html