Networking Tip of the Day—Business Card Poker

Next time you attend a networking event (meeting of your local library association or consortium, for instance), be sure to take a nice stack of your business cards. If your employer doesn’t provide them or if you’re unemployed—especially if you’re out of a job—make your own on your computer or at your local print shop.

When you sit down at the table, deal out one business card to each person or place setting at the table—just like in poker. The idea is for everyone to follow suit (or is this business card bridge?) so that each person will have the business card of everyone at the table. During the meal, write a note on the back of each card so that you will remember 1) at what event you collected the card and 2) something that the person wore, said, or did that was memorable.

You should, of course, continue to collect business cards the old-fashioned way, when you meet someone formally or informally. This is just an additional idea.

When you get back to the office or back home, enter the information on both sides of the card into a database. In no time you will build up a database of contacts that you can use when you have a tough reference question, need an ILL fast, are looking for a job, or just want to connect with a colleague. (I use AskSam because it’s super easy to set up and use and searches all fields of the entries lightning fast. I’ve had databases with nearly 2000 entries and the response is instantaneous. See http://www.asksam.com/brochure.asp for more information. )

So, play a “game” of business card poker at the next networking opportunity and be a winner!

FOR SOLO LAW LIBRARIANS IN THE UK

If you are an OPL in a law library in Britain or Ireland, you are in luck. BIALL (the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians) has a new group just for you. The One Man Band/Small Teams Group has just been organized. "It is proposed that the primary method of meeting will be email and voice conferencing, with a session also being scheduled for the BIALL Conference. The aim will be to use the available technology to allow individiuals to participate in the activity of the group with a minimum expense of time and money."

There is a BIALL-SOLOS mailing list, too. If you want to be added to it, email with the message SUBSCRIBE BIALL-SOLOS.

URL: http://www.biall.org.uk -- click on OMB/Small Teams under Groups in the left column.

PS. Check out the results of their May 2004 survey on Budgeting and Marketing; Increasing Value in Hard Times.. There are some interesting numbers and some even more interesting comments under case studies.

NEW LIBRARY NETWORKING SITE

It seems that every other day there is a new library networking site announced. I don't think we need this many sites and many or most of them will probably die from lack of support, activity, or money, but here's the latest--and it seems pretty good.

LibGig: Your Career, Your Community is "dedicated to bringing together everyone who accesses, organizes, creates, manages, produces or distributes information for a living." A big purview to be sure, but it's nice that they named it LibGig and not InfoGig or such.

It consists of three sections: careers, schools, and community. Careers has searchable job listings--currently free for both sides, but employers will be charged a pretty reasonable fee (US$99 per month) soon. Most of them look pretty interesting and varied. There is also a resume doctor (Meredith Lavine), sample resumes, and career questions and answers.
Schools has, in addition to a list of all ALA accredited LIS schools, alumni profiles and links to continuing education and certification opportunities. I would like to see this expand to include listings of schools, etc. from outside North America.
Finally, Community has three exclusive blogs and links to others, new product announcements, an event calendar, and industry news. Here there's a forum, too. Not much on it yet, but it could improve.

Who's behind LibGig? Larry Honig is the principal of LAC New Ventures, a technology entrepreneur, and has worked for MIT's Lincoln Lab, the Gartner Group, and Broadcasting & Cable magazine. Raissa Fomerand is LAC's VP of sales and marketing and a librarian! She was publisher and founder of The Librarians Yellow Pages. Web content manager is Gabe Geltzer.

URL: http://www.libgig.com

NEW NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY FOR NEW YORK LIBRARIANS

Tom Nielsen, a former OPL who is now the Member Services Manager at the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO, a library consortium serving libraries in NYC and Westchester County, north of the city) would like you to know about a great regional professional membership for any solos who don’t get a lot of support from their employer but still want to stay in touch with other info pros.

METRO has launched a new membership category called myMETRO. myMETRO provides a full range of services in professional development and career support for individual librarians, information professionals, students, support staff and retirees. Previously, METRO membership was limited to libraries, archives and research organizations in New York City and Westchester County, New York. With myMETRO, individuals from across the region can take advantage of myMETRO benefits such as: discounts on METRO workshops, professional development grants, networking events and receptions, and special career-focused courses designed to increase the skills and leadership abilities of information professionals.

Note: membership is $100 for professionals, $50 for retirees or students.

For more information, contact Tom 212 228 2320 x16 or or check out their website at http://tinyurl.com/3q2kvm.

FIVE SUPERFLUOUS SITES

“NowPublic is a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world…with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries—”now listing over 121,000 members in over 4000 cities. Stories fall into these categories: local, politics, culture, entertainment, life, places, favorites, and newsroom. Other features are “24hrs of photos and videos,” “Now on NowPublic,” and “good members.” There’s an RSS feed. Its parent company is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
This seems to me to be yet another newsline, albeit with user-generated stories. I’m not impressed, but you may find it useful.
URL: http://www.nowpublic.com/

“Truemors is a web site that enables you to “tell the world”—within the bounds of good taste and the law anyway. You can post your rumors, news, and sightings….” It is the product of Nononina, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, USA. Its categories are latest, greatest, auto, business, crap, entertainment, food, gaming, health, news, odd, politics, science, sex, sports, and tech. It, too, has an RSS feed available.

I like this one a bit more, but still don’t see a real need for it.

URL: http://truemors.com/

“LinkedIn is an online network of more than 12 million experienced professionals from around the world.” I like it because all fields in one’s profile are searchable, so you can find a classmate, fellow librarian, etc. It is free, but, of course, they also offer a paid version with more bells and whistles.

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/

Wikiseek searches only Wikipedia pages and sites referenced within it. The interface is extremely simple, like Google, and “as you type, Wikiseek will suggest categories related to your query term.” But aren’t the contents of Wikipedia findable from Google? Is there a real need for this service?

URL: http://www.wikiseek.com/

GlobalIncidentMap is more than unnecessary; it could be dangerous. It maps anything and everything that might possibly be related to terrorism. The categories are: airport/aviation incidents, arson/fire incidents, biological incidents/threats/anthrax hoaxes, bomb incidents/explosives/hoax devices/ chemical incidents, dam incidents, radiation incidents/smuggling/proliferation, chemical attack (how is this different than an incident), other suspicious activity, shipping/maritime/ports/cargo/waterways security, assassination/assassination attempt, railways/train stations, bus stations/bus security/bus related incidents, bridge/tunnel incidents and security, shootings/sniper incidents, terrorist arrests/captured/killed locations, general terrorism, and oil gas infrastructure: incidents/threats/news. It is a produce of TransitSecurityReport.

It is up-to-date: the Minnesota bridge collapse is included. This is a perfect example of why I call this a dangerous site. The collapse had nothing to do with terrorism. Two other examples: a crew leaves a train unattended—it could be hijacked and a theft of a chemical that could be converted to the poison ricin. Not only are these not in the same league as bombs attacks in Iraq (which are also mapped), but they could make people even more paranoid than they are now. I do not recommend its use.

URL:http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

POWER NETWORKING FOR INTROVERTS

This is a relatively new site from Marcy Phelps [Phelps Research, Lakewood, Colorado, USA], a professional researcher and trainer who spoke at the recent SLA conference.

This is from her first post. “Welcome to Power Networking for Introverts, a blog for introverts who want to overcome their fear of networking. I'll be posting tips and techniques, recommended books and websites, and information about my upcoming presentations. I look forward to talking with introverts and hope that this blog helps you develop your personal and business networks.”

There’s some good stuff here—take a look.

URL: http://www.introvertscannetwork.com/

NEW FORUM FOR OPLS IN AUSTRALIA (and soon, elsewhere)

Denise Cadman, coordinator of the Queensland OPAL (One-Person Australian Librarians) group (part of ALIA, the Australian Library and Information Association), has created a new facility for the OPALs community, The OPALs Forum. The forum will give you the possibility to share your knowledge and get support from OPALs in Australia and abroad. OPALs in Australia have the opportunity to be the "early adopters" for this new initiative. Based on your participation and feedback, this facility could be extended to library OPALs globally. Please note that the forum is for OPALs only and you are required to register with your real name and an email address that can be used to identify you as an OPAL.

The forum will be a learning experience for all of us—this is ther first use of this forum software.

If anything doesn’t work as you think it should, or you would like to see additional features enabled in the forum software please post in a new thread.

To register for the OPAL Forum, go to http://forums.softlinkint.com
Once registered, access the OPAL Forum at http://forums.softlinkint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10
If you need help to register, go to http://forums.softlinkint.com/video/registration.wmv to download the registration video.

I hope you will enjoy using the OPAL Forum!