GREAT CONTINUING EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY

I don't normally publicize the work of competitors, but this is too good an opportunity for you to pass up. SLA's CLICK U LIVE is presenting a two-part online seminar, PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR SOLO LIBRARIANS, presented by Pat Wagner of Pattern Research.

The first part I, Mastering the Project Map: Solo Management and Leadership, will be held 13 September 2006, 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET and part II, Success in Small Steps: See Your Work with Fresh Eyes, will be held 2 weeks later, on 27 September. Here is the information, from the SLA website (http://www.sla.org/clickulive/). You can sign up for the course at that site, too.

The Course: The solo librarian must master multi-tasking without the luxury of staff members to whom to delegate tasks. Often he or she feels isolated within their institutions, without colleagues who understand their concerns. The responses to this kind of stress are predictable: the conscientious solo librarian tries to work faster and put in longer hours. The result is a temporary increase in productivity and long-term burnout. Instead, the key to solo project management is to become one’s own manager and leader: pausing to plan, fostering peer relationships with other departments, building partnerships with customers and negotiating priorities.

This two-part seminar series addresses making hard choices, mastering the project map, creating a working strategic plan for special and ongoing projects, communicating expectations and negotiating the ratios among cost, time and quality with multiple customers. Participants will also learn to avoid the most common project management mistakes, including project creep, concrete thinking, perfectionism, pet projects, and conflict avoidance, as they apply good management practices to those everyday tasks that waste time and damage credibility.

Part I: In the first segment, we will investigate the project map and learn how to apply the skills of the manager (pausing, planning, communicating) and the leader (risking, anticipating, influencing) to improve productivity, not just the skills of the task-oriented professional (reacting, focusing, self-governing). Participants will learn how to use the map to refocus on workplace relationships outside of the library and keep the bigger picture in mind when responding to customer requests. The map will also help participants understand why they have to shift some of their time and resources away from “doing” their work to coordinating projects and building support.

Part II: In the second segment, we will review dozens of simple but effective methods to improve productivity in the solo library, even on stressed-out days. The emphasis will be on changing one’s behavior in small steps, from taking five minutes to pick three priorities to stopping for essential quick breaks to investing in short meetings with key players in the institution. Participants will be able to work on real projects and goals, and finish the segment with a quick and decent action plan to improve productivity in the first hours after the seminar is over. The hardest part of this program will be learning that the demands of the workplace is not what is causing our problems but rather how we respond to them.

Targeted Learners: This presentation is for those who work alone, who have multiple supervisors, or who are looking for ways to improve the productivity when staff is cut and budgets collapse. It is also useful for frontline supervisors who want to improve workplace performance. It is designed for people with at least two years’ of workplace experience and would be considered an intermediate class.

Critical Learning Questions: What do we have to give up in order to stay relevant to our customers’ changing needs? What will keep us anchored to our goals on a busy day despite interruptions and conflicting demands? Which better project management practices can we apply immediately, even when we don’t have enough time, money or staff to what we think is right?

The cost for each seminar is a very reasonable $99 is you listen to it live. You can also purchase a reply for only $69. When you register, your location becomes a Click U Live! site. The cost is per site [phone connection], not per person. You can host as many people as you like for one low site fee! So be sure to invite your colleagues to learn with you! Register before 6 September and save $10.00! Program registrations beyond that date will be $109. Through the latest in web-conferencing technology, SLA can now offer a replay of the audio and video of the seminar exactly as it occurred live. Purchase of a Replay includes a link to the session. Replays will be emailed within three business days of purchase. You will have 30 days unlimited usage. Access will begin upon clicking on the URL. You will be able to see and hear the seminar, including the questions and answers, just as those who participated in the live event. You will also be able to start, stop, and re-wind the presentation.

This is a great opportunity to take part in a good seminar at a very reasonable price.

LIBRARY PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE (JOURNAL)

I’ve just run across an interesting journal. “Library Philosophy and Practice is a peer-reviewed electronic journal that publishes articles exploring the connection between library practice and the philosophy and theory behind it. These include explorations of current, past, and emerging theories of librarianship and library practice, as well as reports of successful, innovative, or experimental library procedures, methods, or projects in all areas of librarianship, set in the context of applied research.”

The editors are Mary K. Bolin [University of Nebraska—Lincoln, USA] and Gail Z. Eckwright [University of Idaho, Moscow, USA]. Articles are contributed by librarians and scholars from around the world, thus giving us a chance to read viewpoints other than those we normally see. For this reason alone, you should look at this journal.

LP&P available for free by going to their website (http://libr.unl.edu:2000/LPP/lpp.htm).

The current issue is Volume 8, number 2, Spring 2006. Here are the titles of some of the articles that have appeared in this journal.

Managing the Library’s Corporate Culture for Organizational Efficiency, Productivity and Enhanced Service
Total Quality Management in the Academic Library
Mankind’s Memory Managers: A New Paradigm of Library Science
Thoughts on the Future of Library Computing: Implications of the Use of Handheld Computers for Library Service
From the Physical Reality to the Virtual Reality in the Library Environment
Teaching Information Skills in the Information Age: the Need for Critical Thinking,
Placing Value on Information
The Future in Context: How Librarians Can Think Like Futurists
The High-Tech and the Beautiful: Library Buildings, Digital Libraries, and the Future
Nontraditional Students’ Library Satisfaction
Building a Digital Library: With Comments on Cooperative Grant Projects and the Goals of a Digital Library
Patron-Initiated, Web-based Document Delivery in Germany
Incorporating the Values of the Legal Profession into a Research Instruction Experience for Law Students: Simulating a Law Firm Research Experience
Digital Reference: What the Past Has Taught Us, What the Future Will Hold
How to Speak Out (Visually) at your Library

I'M BLOGGING AT THE SLA CONFERENCE BLOG

Just to let you know, I will be one of the bloggers on the SLA 2006 Conference Blog. Look for it at http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_conference_blog/. This is the first time I've done this, so it should be interesting.

Of course, that means I won't be blogging here until AFTER the conference (10-15 June).

Until later.....

TWO MORE WORTHWHILE LIBRARIAN BLOGS

Library Support Staff.com

“Finding and Accessing ~ those ‘links’ that will benefit, educate and illuminate you, for the betterment of YOU, Your Job, and Your workplace.” From Mary Niederlander, former library technician in a hospital library in Buffalo, New York (now retired), the site includes on the job help, educational sites, library journals, reference sites, information on job hunting, web publishing, fun stuff, and other good stuff—all done with a great sense of humor. Not just for support staff!

URL: http://www.librarysupportstaff.com

Library Technician

“Life as a long term techie of the library variety.” From an experienced Australian library technician, newly employed after being made redundant (laid off) from a large state library. He provides a different slant on library issues. For example, check out his post “Not really interested anymore” at http://library
technician.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/05/11/not_really_interested
_anymore.html

URL: http://librarytechnician.blogspirit.com/

POINTERS FOR SUCCESSFUL WEBCASTING

David Lee King [Kansas City (Missouri) Public Library] gives good guidelines for before, during, and after a live webcast. Read this if you are even thinking about webcasting!

URL: http://www.davidleeking.com/2006/04/30/pointers-for-successful-webcasting/

FOUR “NEW” LIBRARIAN BLOGS

Here are four blogs by librarians that I’ve just discovered. Some have been around a while; some are just starting; all are worth taking a look at.

Alt ref

“This blog will focus on new approaches toward providing library assistance to patrons…or whatever else I feel like rambling on about.” From Brian Mathews, Information Services Librarian & Distance Learning Services Coordinator, The Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Check out his post, “Fun with Library Catalogs!” (http://altref.blogspot.com/2006/05/
fun-with-library-catalogs.html)—it has two videos showing how confusing the online catalog is to our customers.
URL: http://altref.blogspot.com

Ab’s blog

“Links, information, and some analysis about library tech stuff” from Abigail Bordeaux, Binghamton (New York) University Libraries. There’s a good post on “Keeping Up: Beyond the Library” (http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/mt/abs/archives/2006/05/
keeping_up_beyo.html)
URL: http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/mt/abs/

The “M” Word

“A blog designed to bring the wonderful world of marketing to librarians.” This is a topic near and dear to my heart and I’m really glad to see more marketing information being put out there by and for librarians. This one is from Nancy Dowd, “marketer” for the New Jersey State Library. There’s not too much there at the moment, but I have great hopes for this site.
URL: http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/

Medlibrarian.net

“Taking the pulse of medical librarianship.” This new blog (May 2006) is by Mary Carmen Chimato and Darren Chase of the Health Sciences Library, Stony Brook (NY) University. It’s a good-looking blog with lots of promise.
URL: http://medlibrarian.net

If you are a librarian with a blog or know of a good one, please send me your URL so I can promote it on OPL Plus.

DESIGNING A [PUBLIC] LIBRARY?

Billed as “the resource for library planning, design & building,” Designing Libraries: Library Buildings Online is a great resource from the UK. It is a joint venture of Museums Libraries and Archive (MLA), the Thomas Parry Library, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the Chartered Institution of Librarians and Information Professionals (CILIP). While there are only UK resources listed now, it is planned to expand to include sites from other countries.

The site provides: a database of descriptions and images of recent completed, and in progress, UK and worldwide public library building projects; a resource for interactively sharing expertise and experience on library planning and design, through discussion forums and email lists; and links to a range of on and offline resources useful to anyone involved in planning, designing or building libraries. There is also a newsletter you can sign up for.

The database lists the library and contact details, type, population served, type of construction, size (of building and collection), architect, furniture supplier, cost, funding source, special features, awards won, if any, URL, and photos if supplied. There is also a map of its exact location. There are also five photo albums: exteriors, interiors, children’s areas, floor plans, and signage.

Finally, there are a few user forums: hot topics, accessibility, technology, urban design week, public libraries and public spaces, and public libraries in a retail environment. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were such a resource for US libraries??? (Other than the annual Library Journal building issue…)

URL: http://www.designinglibraries.org.uk/

I’M BACK…DID YOU MISS ME?

I’m home from a fantastic 12-day trip to France and Germany. My cousin and I went there to do some genealogical research. We stayed with brand-new friends in the small (population 1700) village of Lembach, Alsace, France—just a few km from the Germany border—where our great-great-great grandparents lived in the mid-19th century. It’s also the home of the grandparents of US astronaut Russell Schweickart and one of his ancestors was a witness at their wedding! We stayed in a home that was built in the early 1800s. The village is just beautiful, with lace curtains in every window and flowers everywhere.

I drove all over northern Alsace and southern Germany (the Pfaltz region) in a rented Mercedes A150 (a really neat car—they ought to sell them here) looking a records and talking to archivists and visiting tiny villages, including the one where my GGGgrandmother was born, Heiligemoshel. We also visited Strasbourg and its cathedral started in the 1100s and the German town of Erlangen (to visit a former French professor of my cousin, whom she hadn’t seen in 30 years). Everyone was very welcoming and friendly. Since my cousin spoke fluent French and our hosts spoke both French and German, we had no trouble getting around. (I am also bilingual, but my other language—Spanish—wasn’t much help here.)

But now I’m back, almost caught up, and blogging again. So, stay tuned….

BLOGGING BREAK

I will not be blogging for a while. I am off to France and Germany from 30 April to 12 May to do some genealogical research with my cousin. After I catch up when I get back, I'll be "talking" to you again.

Cheers.

LIST OF LISTS ON WEB 2.0

If you're into the Web 2.0 phenomenon, Saul Weiner, has a list of 16 lists dealing with it on his blog A Zulu in Silicon Valley. There are 14 "general" lists and two "best of lists."

The "best of" lists are:
#1 Dion Hinchcliffe's 2005 awards 1 and 2
#2 SEOmoz's web 2.0 awards

URLs:
list of lists: http://saulweiner.blogspot.com/2006/04/list-of-web20-lists.html
Saul's blog, A Zulu in Silicon Valley: http://saulweiner.blogspot.com
Dion Hinchcliffe's 2005 awards: http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm and
http://web2.wsj2.com/more_great_web_20_software.htm
SEOmoz's web 2.0 awards: http://web2.0awards.org/

BEWARE THE KILLER Bs

Co-owners Charlotte and Cecil Brewer, owners of The Book Rack bookstore in Lodi, California, “were looking forward to celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their store this summer but now it’s slated for closure. The reason...competition from the “killer Bs”(Barnes &Noble and Borders), a term coined by Bill Maxwell, former owner of the now defunct Maxwell’s Bookmark in Stockton,” California.

I’d never heard of “killer Bs” before—I like it.

Found on LISNews, 20 April 2006, http://lisnews.org/articles/06/04/20/1252236.shtml

BLOGS BY JUDGES

Ian Best (third year law student, Ohio StateUniversity), has added four blogs by sitting judges to his Taxonomy of Legal Blogs. They are:

Becker-Posner Blog, by Richard A. Posner, US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Gary Becker, Professor, University of Chicago Department of Economics and Sociology.
A Criminal Waste of Space, from California Court of Appeals, 4th District, Associate Justice William W. Bedsworth.
Have Opinion Will Travel, from an anonymous judge on the California Court of Appeals.
Say What? “Classic Humor” from the courtroom, by Jerry Buchmeyer, US District Judge of the Northern District of Texas.

All are very interesting, but I especially like the last one. There are great fillers here for legal library newsletters.

URLs:
Becker-Posner Blog: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
A Criminal Waste of Space: http://www.acriminalwasteofspace.com/
Have Opinion Will Travel: http://haveopinionwiiltravel.blogspot.com/
Say What? http://www.texasbar.com/saywhat/weblog/
Taxonomy of Legal Blogs: http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/
3l_epiphany/2006/03/a_taxonomy_of_l.html

WHOIS CHANGES ITS NAME

WHOIS is now DomainTools.com. The service lets you find out who owns a domain name and other neat facts. Thanks to LibrarianInBlack for the heads-up.

URL: http://domaintools.com

Librarian in Black: http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/

POSTER AVAILABLE TO HELP YOUR CUSTOMERS USE GOOGLE BETTER

Looking for tools to help teach your patrons how to use Google more effectively? Google has a downloadable poster available on their website. It has “some nifty modifiers to type in your Google search box to refine your searches and get the best results.” It includes enclosing an exact phrase in quotation marks, excluded words, numerical ranges, definitions, math answers, and conversions. (Did you know that you could do all those things?) You choose between the 8½ x 11 and 17 x 22 sizes. Print several and post them at your public-access terminals (and anywhere else your customers search).

URL: http://www.google.com/librariancenter/librarian_download.html

MEDICAL REFERENCE FOR NON-MEDICAL LIBRARIANS

Lynne Fox of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, maintains a fantastic website of over 20 pages of links to medical resources. Categories include: General Tips, Access to Health Care, Alternative Therapies, Cancer, Child Health, Diagnostic Tests, Dictionaries, Directories of Medical Web Sites, Diagnosis, Drugs, Evaluating Medical Web Sites, Evidence-Based Medicine Resources for Consumers, Health Literacy, Science Fair Projects, Mental Health, Multilingual Health Information, Nutrition, Search Engines, Senior Health, and Spanish Language Resources. I doubt if anything very worthwhile is not included. An invaluable resource!

URL: http://Denison.uchsc.edu/outreach/medbib3.htm

USING IM FOR REFERENCE

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki has a really good section on Online Reference using IM (Instant Messaging). You can find suggestions/recommendations for software, a list of libraries using IM and other virtual reference methods, and blogs and websites on the subject (along with some specific articles to read).

If you’re interested in implementing this Library 2.0 technique—and you should be interested—check it out.

URL: http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Online_Reference

NEW ONLINE JOURNAL: BIOMEDICAL DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Biomedical Digital Libraries is a new “Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal that considers manuscripts on all aspects o digital library content and usage in biomedical settings, including academic medical centers, research and development institutes, and health care institutions.” It is edited by Marcus A. Banks, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Wayne J. Peay, University of Utah. They are now accepting manuscripts.

URL: http://www.bio-diglib.com/home

WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?

John Jantsch of Jantsch Communications (Kansas City, Missouri, USA) asked this question in a post on his small business marketing blog, Duct Tape Marketing .

“A lot of folks answer that question with a job title or category or worse, something painful sounding like, I sell houses. If you really want to get your marketing message to a place that will get your prospect’s attention you must be able to answer that question—what do you do for a living?—with a valuable benefit. One that makes the listener say, “Really, tell me more.”

“I was listening to a doctor of geriatric medicine answer this question the other day, and I think he gets it. When asked what he did he said, ‘well, I’m the Chief of Geriatrics but what I do is help people stay in their homes longer, go to one more grandaughter’s wedding and attend their great, great grandson’s Bar Mitzvah.’ Now, you tell me, when you need a doctor to care for you when you get to that point in life, who would you call?

“This example is true for your business, service or product as well—what magical thing can it do for me? Tell the world, that’s what you do for a living, from this point forward.”

This got me to thinking…what do I do? I bring tips and tricks on management and marketing to librarians in small or one-person libraries to enable them to serve their customers better, to inform their management how valuable they are so they get the respect, support, and compensation they deserve, and to let them know that they are not alone—they are part of a network of individual in similar situations.

Now, you try it. Write down what you do—in one sentence—and send it along to me (via the comment feature at the end of this post). (If you want to be anonymous, send it to me by email and I’ll post it for you.)

URL: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/weblog.php?id=P563

FIND OUT WHICH LIBRARIES ARE BLOGGING

Amanda Etches-Johnson, a reference librarian at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has put together a Blogging Libraries Wiki on her blog, Blog Without a Library. It organizes the links by type of library: academic, public, school, and special, with a separate section for blogs used for internal staff communication within a library. Most of the special libraries are either government or library associations, but there are a couple of ones from law firms.

The site is well worth a look. You can see what other libraries are doing and, because it's a Wiki, you can add your own blog to the list.

URL: http://blogwithoutalibrary.net/ (click on the blogging libraries wiki tab at the top)

WEB 2.O: THE INEVITABLE TROUGH OF DISILLUSIONMENT

Stephen Abram has an interesting illustration on his blog, Stephen’s Lighthouse. It is an innovation curve for Web 2.0. It graphs 2.0 tools from Technology Trigger, to Peak of Inflated Expectations, through the Trough of Disillusionment, on to the Slope of Enlightenment, and finally to the Plateau of Productivity. He took the curve from an article on Web 2.0 Journal, entitled “Is Web 2.0 Entering "The Trough of Disillusionment"?, by Dion Hinchcliffe. Abram ends by asking, “Where are your services on the curve? Which ones are you experimenting with to be read when they ‘take off’?”

URLs:
Abram’s post: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com/archives/
2006/04/trends_and_trou.html
Hinchliffe’s article: http://www.web2journal.com/read/172417.htm

NEW FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

The Virtual Chase, from Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, has debuted a beta version of the Company Information Guide—a part of their Resource Guides. This searchable database lists annotated resources and information about Web-based sources for legal researchers.

It is divided into 7 parts: General Information, Officers & Executives, Public Company Filings, Litigation & Case Law, Public Records, Public Opinion, and Companies in the News. In the future, resources on finding information on people and legal topics will be added to the Resource Guides.

URL: http://www.virtualchase.com/topics/company_information
_index.shtml

BLOG TOOLS

David Rowse of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, has put together a list of blogging tools suggested by the readers of his blog, Pro Blogger. Categories include Statistics packages (such as Sitemeter and Google Analytics), Blog Editors (BlogJet and Qumana and others), News Aggregators and News Sourcing Tools (including Bloglines, Google Reader and FeedDemon), Email Subscription and Newsletter Services (FeedBlitz, etc.), and Other Tools. This last catch-all category includes such diverse tools as services for pinging, copyright protection, RSS, managing photographs, organizing your blogs, searching tools, commenting, and live chat. Be sure to read the 26 comments, some have more suggestions, some are just strange.

URL: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/04/15/blog-tools

OBSERVATORY OF THE LEGAL BLOGSPHERE

This database from the Instituto Politecnico de Beja, Portugal, lists and links to law blogs (blawgs) around the world in English (British, American, Australian, and Canadian)), Spanish (Spain, Argentina, and Chile), Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), French, German, and Italian. Within each language, the blawgs are arranged in categories: general blawgs, thematic blawgs, lawyers and law, and student blogs. There are also links to the blawgs of the Legal Framework for the Information Society Network (LEFIS), in English (covering Europe), Spanish, (both LEFIS and general blogs), Portuguese, and Greek. The site also links to other blawgs and blawglists such as Blawg.org, Inter Alia, and Legal Blog Watch.

URL:
Observatory of the Legal Blogosphere: http://www.estig.ipbeja.pt/~obsblogjur/homepageeng.html
LEFIS: http://www.lefis.org/
Blawg.org: http://blawg.org/
Inter Alia: http://www.inter-alia.net
Legal Blog Watch: http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/

INFORMATION PLEASE, CANADIAN STYLE

David McKie, an award-winning journalist who is a member of the investigative unit of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, has created a database of requests for information filed with departments and agencies of the Canadian government under Canada's Access to Information Act. It is searchable by keyword, date, and allows proximity qualifiers. Each entry gives the contact information for pursuing your request.

URL: http://www.onlinedemocracy.ca/CAIRS/CAIA-OD.htm

PLAY—AND READ ABOUT—BALL!

The Guide to Baseball Fiction is a combination of bibliographic checklist and evaluative critical guide to over 714 works of baseball fiction. It has been created by Tim Morris of the University of Texas, Arlington, USA, and includes adult novels, short stories, juvenile fiction, plays, films, and criticism. He identifies outstanding books by a ratings system, where one star means a work with something of true interest or originality; two stars indicates a substantial success on its own terms, with much to interest a reader; and three stars mark an outstanding work in the genre of baseball fiction—an essential work for students and general readers alike. There are only six three-star works. The database is browsable, not searchable and there are also references to similar databases elsewhere.

URL: http://www.uta.edu/english/tim/baseball/

A KM (Knowledge Management) BLOG

E L S U A ~ A KM Blog is “a blog about Knowledge Management, Communities of Practice, Collaboration, Social Networking, and Work/Life Balance. (That’s a wide range of subjects!) It is from Luis Suarez, an education specialist or IBM Global Business Services. Specific topics will include remote collaboration in distributed/virtual teams, ways to foster and boost KM techniques, personal knowledge management, and many more.

He has all sorts of resources, including news items on KM, the ITtoolbox, and graphic maps of people who’ve accessed his blog. Very interesting.

URL: http://www.elsua.net/

AUSTRALIAN BLOGS AND BLOGGERS

If you are looking for a list of bloggers in Australia or blogs about Australia, look no further than AustralianBlogs.com.au. It is a “free community resource…similar to del.icio.us (but less invasive).” All blogs listed have to be by an Australian or about an Australian subject. It is staffed by “a small but dedicated team of volunteers who believe that the Australian blogosphere produces high quality blogs that are just as good, I not better, than those available offshore.”

As of today there are 329 blogs listed, but only two by librarians, according to Michelle McLean, a part-time public librarian in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on her blog, Connecting Librarian. I found a few more.

Ruminations, by an anonymous librarian in Perth, Western Australia. This is mostly a personal blog, but she does talk about libraries some.
you cried for night, by Genevieve Tucker, a student librarian with a family who likes to keep an eye on cyberspace and the specialised writing and journalism happening there. On the “About” page are links to blogs about Australian writing and literature (including journals and ezines and poetry magazines). The blog is quite interesting too.
The Exploded Library, by Morgan Wilson, who lives in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. Wilson is Electronic & Research Services Librarian at the AGSM's Frank Lowy Library which is on the campus of the University of New South Wales.
The Weblog Repository, also by Genevieve Tucker. There aren’t many posts, but it has many, many links to resources in the blogosphere, in Australia and beyond.

URLs:
The list: http://AustralianBlogs.com.au
Connecting Librarian: http://connectinglibrarian.blogspot.com/
Ruminations: http://flexnib.blogspot.com/
you cried for night: http://austlit.typepad.com/cfn/
The Exploded Library: http://www.explodedlibrary.info/
The Weblog Repository: http://austlit.edublogs.org/

SEEING THE WORLD AS IT IS—AND CAN BE

Seth Godin, on MarketingProfs’s blog DailyFix, has this thought-provoking post:

“Two things marketers do…

“1. Do the work necessary to be sure that your perception of the world is similar to the world as it is.

“2. Create the stores (and the experiences to back them up) that change the world as it is.

“Most marketers fail at #1. By focusing on what they want, or by having a selfish view of things, they miss the reality of what the world believes. And that can cause us to miss #2. Your story has to be grounded in the worldview of your intended audience.”

In other words, make sure you know what your customers think of your library before you try to change that perception. Do you know their worldview?

URL: http://blog.marketingprofs.com/2006/04/the_world_as_it_is.html

ALL COMPETITION IS LOCAL -- YES!

Jill Stover has another thought-provoking post on her blog, Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book. Here is some of it, but you should read it all.

"The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became of the idea that most competition is local, which is especially true for libraries. Just think, even the biggest, most well-known brands only have a competitive edge to the extent employees on the local level respond to and get to know their neighbors. A barrista who remembers my name and coffee drink from day to day is a more compelling reason for me to patronize Starbucks than the look and feel of Starbuck’s Web site, for example. If that barrista is consistently rude and messes up my order, I’ll go to the competitor down the street, no matter how much equity Starbuck’s brand wields.

"For libraries too, their success or failure seems to hinge on how the stack up to their competition locally. If students can only find social space or an item on reserve at your library, than you definitely have an edge. If you’re the only game in town for children’s programming on Saturday mornings, you may also have a distinct advantage. Likewise, if a coffee bar with free WiFi opens up across the street, you may be in for some trouble, depending on the needs of your patrons. It seems that the local scene is where the threats and opportunities lay, no matter what’s going on in the grander scheme of things.

"Of course, any good marketing plan considers broader social, technological and environmental changes, as those things do indeed shape behaviors on the local level. But when all is said and done, it comes down to what you can offer that the guy down the street can’t and finding a way to sustain that advantage."

This last paragraph ties in to my previous post on "Do You Have a Bibliographic Point of View?"

URL:

http://librarymarketing.blogspot.com/2006/04/all-competition-is-local.html

DO YOU HAVE A BIBLIOGRAPHIC POINT OF VIEW?

Jill Stover ponders this question on her blog, Library Marketing—Thinking Outside the Book. What she means is—“what the heck [do] we stand for”?

Are you the “cool new technology librarian,” the “librarian who always knows the latest news or books,” the “scholarly communication guru,” or “the librarian who is the fun anti-stereotype”?

You can’t be everything to everyone, so you need to find your strengths and build on them. Your library should reflect your own personality, but you have to find your personality first.

So, what is your point of view?

URL: http://librarymarketing.blogspot.com/2006/04/
whats-your-bibliographic-point-of-view.html

NEW FROM THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

LactMed is a new database from the USA National Library of Medicine. It is part of their TOXNET system. It is aimed at the medical profession and the nursing mother and contains over 450 records on the level of compatibility of the drug with breastfeeding and alternate drugs to consider. It was developed by a pharmacist. There is also a glossary of terms and links to other breastfeeding resources.

URL: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?LACT

WHO'S OUT THERE?

I'm curious. Who's reading this blog?
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NEW BLOG FOR YA LIBRARIANS

If you work with teens, check out this new blog--Alternative Teen Services. It is "the collaborative effort of two teen librarians who work for the Kansas City Public Library."

URL: http://yalibrarian.com

TOP 12 WEB SITES TO TAKE YOUR BUSINESS GLOBAL

“Taking your business global means searching for new customers and new markets. More than 95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside the United States.”

So writes Laurel Delaney on Daily Fix, the new blog from MarketingProfs.com. Your employers (and you) may find these websites useful.

Here are just a couple of them, to whet your appetite.
1. The Federation of International Trade Associations (FITA), http://www.fita.org/index.html
“Furnishes trade leads, news, events and links to 7,000 international trade-related Web sites.”
2. globalEDGE, http://globaledge.msu.edu/
“Offers global business knowledge, including country insights, resource desk, knowledge room, community forums, and a free newsletter.”

URLs:
Top 12 Web Sites: http://blog.marketingprofs.com/2006/04/
top_12_websites_to_take_your_b.html
Daily Fix: http://blog.marketingprofs.com/
MarketingProfs.com: http://www.marketingprofs.com

BBC BLOGS—ALL IN ONE PLACE

Now you can find all of the blogs from the British Broadcasting Corporation in one place. They are arranged by category. There are also links to other BBC sites and an index. Some of these look fascinating—check them out!

Community: Island Blogging (Scotland), Northeast Wales,
and Ouch (for people with disabilities)
Music and Comedy: Comedy
People: Dan Damon (World Update), Paul Mason (Newsnight),
Nick Robinson (Political Editor), and Jeff Zycinski (Radio Scotland)
Sport: Commonwealth Games
World: My Africa and World Have Your Say

URL: http://blogs.bbc.co.uk/

AND THE WINNER IS...

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards

Announced 28 March 2006. For more on each winner, the runners-up, and the ranking rationale, see the awards website: http://web2.0awards.org/

Blog Guides

1. Technorati.com, “The authority on what's happening in the world of weblogs, Technorati brings you the latest content from over 29 million blogs, sorted and tagged. Find favorites and authorities in a plethora of subjects”

2. “Blogniscient.com tracks and filters news that's all the buzz in blogs they rank the ‘best’ of the blogosphere.”

3. Bloglines.com is "a free online service for searching, subscribing to, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content."

Bookmarking

1. Blummy.com, “A free tool for quick access to your favorite web services via your bookmark toolbar,”

2. Furl.net “allows you to easily save, take notes on and share the links you've stored, or browse others' most popular bookmarks to find new and interesting things.”

3. Spurl.net: “Never lose track of a web Furlsite again with Spurl's free on-line bookmarking service and search engine.”

Collaborative Writing & Word Processing

1. Writely.com. “Create documents or upload Word files, then edit, share and collaborate in real time.”

2. Rallypointhq.com.” Selectively collaborate with coworkers and peers.”

3. Thinkfree Office Online (online.Thinkfree.com) “Open, edit and create Microsoft Office compatible documents from the Web including spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Post documents to your blog with no conversion and/or convert existing documents to PDF format.”

Communication: Email & Chat

1. Meebo.com. “Chat on AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Gtalk, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger via your web browser in one simple AJAX interface.”

2. Campfirenow.com: “Web-based group chat for businesses, Campfire allows real-time sharing, editing, and collaboration for team members in a secure, password-protected chat.”

3. Slawsome.com: “Send voice messages over email the easy way.”

Digital Storage & Remote Access

1. eSnips.com is a hybridization of social bookmarking and file storage.

2. Avvenu.com: “Remotely access your PC via a smooth web interface to edit your documents and share photos & files.”

3. YouSendIt.com: “mail up to 1GB in files (which are hosted on YouSendIt's servers) to as many recipients as you please.”

Mapping

1. Wayfaring.com “allows you to create personal maps with and share them with your friends. Explore maps created by others and connect and collaborate over a vast social network”

2. Frappr.com:” Create a map to pinpoint your location and the locations of all your friends and group members, then invite others from around the world to join.”

3. Housingmaps.com: “Find property for rent, for sale, and for sublet using this Google Maps mashup.”

Personal Organization

1. Hipcal.com, “a stylish online calendar, to-do list and address book”

2. Planzo.com: “a super-simple sharable calendar that allows you to track events, write to-do lists, upload and share files, and more.”

3. Voo2do.com :tracks both personal to-dos and project management.”

Photos & Digital Images

1. Flickr.com: “Store, search, sort, and share your photos with Flickr, a massive photo community with beaucoup social features.”

2. Slide.com: “you can create slideshows for your webpage or desktop: use your own pictures or watch what you like from a host of user-created channels including images from Flickr, The Superficial, iTunes New Releases, and many more.”

3. Zotoc.om “Upload full-sized photos from your computer or cell phone to 2GB of storage on Zoto. Tag 'em and put them in private or public galleries for anyone (or everyone) to see.”

Podcasts

1. Odeo.com: “Record and share audio, then publish your recordings as your own podcast channel. Search or browse Odeo's comprehensive list of other podcasts for inspiration.”

2. PodOmatic.com “brings together sharable audio and video with social networking and popularity. Check your stats to see who likes what you're saying, and visit the vast network of podcasters to hear what else is out there. Search podcasts by genre, recommendations, or a tag cloud of the zeitgeist.”

3. Loomia.com: “A podcast and videocast search engine that will help you discover, share, and manage channels of interest to you. Filter out the fluff and save your favorites using rankings, then browse by popularity, tags, and more, to find what you like.”

Social Networking

1. Facebook.com “is a university networking tool (you need a uni affiliated email to sign up) that allows you to keep track of your college friends using relationship tracking, degrees of separation, photo albums, specialty groups, and more.”

2. Consumating.com: “Meet nerds, geeks, hipsters, bloggers, & other awesome people on Consumating. It's a social space with tagging, popularity rankings, weekly questions, photos contests, and a whole lot more.”

3. Myspace.com: “A massive online community of musicians, students, friends, and singles all looking for connections.”

Social Tagging

1. Stumbleupon.com: “An intelligent tool for browsing and sharing the best websites. Uses ratings to analyze sites and show you only sites you'll like.”

2. Blinklist.com: “a site to mark it as good, and tag it to categorize. Track by favorites, popular, recent, or tagged.”

3. Del.icio.us is a collection of Web favorites presented to you via social tagging. Add, share, keep and discover your most loved pages.”

Video

1. Dailymotion.com: “to showcase your movies either on the site or in a videoblog. Discover other videos with tags or by browsing a wide range of categories from advertisements to humor.”

2. Youtube.com: “A huge archive of searchable, taggable video clips.”

3. Metacafe.com. “Browse, rate, and comment on the thousands of videos , then easily upload and share your own clips.”

Web Development & Design

1. Cssbeauty.com: “A project focused on providing its audience with a database of well designed CSS websites from around the world.”

2. Performancing.com “is a social community for bloggers that also provides both an exceptionally useful toolbar plug-in for Firefox and a robust web analytics solution.”

3. Haveamint.com: “An inexpensive and flexible site usage stats tool that sorts referrers, popular pages, visits, searches, stats, and more, all with a customizable API.”

Wikis (Hosted)

1. Wetpaint.com: “Make your own streamlined, easily editable wiki community with easily navigatable pages and a related tag cloud.”

2. Jotspot (jot.com): “Create and share wiki pages with a WYSIWYG

3. Pbwiki.com: Make a free, password protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich. Easily upload HTML, link files to your pages, integrate RSS, and more.”

STATISTICS CANADA E-PUBS TO BE FREE

As of 24 April 2006, Statistics Canada announced Wednesday that all electronic publications at its website will be free. Print publications and specialty products such as CD-ROMs and data tables will still have a cost.

Thanks to Michel Adrien for this information on his Library Boy blog.

URLs:
Statistics Canada: http://www.statcan.ca/
Library Boy: http://micheladrien.blogspot.com

LIBER8—FOR ECONOMIC INFORMATION

The wonderful librarians at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank have announced Liber8™, “an economic information portal for librarians and students.” It is aimed at university and government document librarians, and the non-economist public. This is in addition to their searchable databases FRED^® and FRASER^®. Included are recent research, latest economic indicators, and useful links.

Liber8 is an acronym for Research Library of the 8th Federal Reserve District.

URL: http://liber8.stlouisfed.org/about.html

GOOGLE SCHOLAR DELIVERS FROM THE BRITISH LIBRARY

Now you can get articles from the British Library through Google Scholar. This is the British Library (BL) Direct pay-per-view service. Of course you can go to BL Direct yourself to access over 9 million articles from 20,000 plus journals—last five years only. Some are available for immediate electronic delivery; the others can take from 2 hours to 5 days, depending on what you’re willing to pay.

And you’ll pay a lot. Basic prices are: ₤7.75 (plus copyright fee) for immediate download or standard electronic delivery; ₤16.00 for 24-hour electronic delivery; ₤21.00 for 2-hour electronic delivery; and ₤8.25 for mail delivery. These are international prices; prices for UK delivery are slightly less.

URLs:
Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com
BL Direct: http://direct.bl.uk

HERE’S A REPORTER THAT GETS IT

Mark Pitsch, a reporter for the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal, wrote a very good article on how libraries are affected by increasing journal prices. Read it at http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060403/
NEWS0104/604030355

WELCOME TO THE LIBRARY

This is great!

“The library staff welcomes you to our library, which is designed to meet your legal information needs through a growing collection of electronic and print resources, value-added services such as research assistance and small-group workshops, and study space for individuals and groups.

“Even when not physically present in the library, you may take advantage of our website to search our many databases, read library publications, or contact us with a reference questions or inter-library loan request. The website has links and information that will help you meet the challenges of today’s fast-paced legal profession. Feel free to contact me or any member of the library staff when you have questions or need assistance.”

Signed, Tim Chinaris, Associate Dean for Information Resources and Director of the Law Library, Jones School of Law, Faulkner University, Montgomery, Alabama, USA.

How do you welcome new employees, students, faculty, residents?

(Thanks to Michael Stephens, Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology blog.)

URLs:
Jones School of Law Library: http://www.faulkner.edu/jsl/library.asp
Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology: http://tametheweb.com

OF FACTS AND MAPS...

JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM, JUST THE FACTS

The World Factbook for 2006 is now available at the CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency) website. Despite its origins, it is a wonderful resource. Included are country profiles, maps, data, flags, and much more on just about every country in the world. It is searchable.

URL: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

AND SPEAKING OF MAPS….

There’s a neat new tool available—Worldmapper “the world as you’ve never seen it before.” It consists of global maps, actually cartograms, each of which re-sizes the countries of the world according to some variable, such as population. It is a wonderful tool. You can print each map as a pdf file, along with some extra information, or buy a high-quality version from them.

Worldmapper is a joint project of professors from the University of Sheffield, UK, the University of Michigan, USA, The Leverhulme Trust and the Geographical Association.

URL: http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/

FREE STUFF FROM ELSEVIER (?!!)

Elsevier (sometimes referred to as “the evil empire”) has made some free pamphlets available as pdf files on their website. They are part of Elsevier’s Library Connect program, which includes a newsletter.
1. 15 Ways to Promote Effective Use of Online Resources
2. How to Get Published in LIS Journals: A Practical Guide
3. 15 Ways to Support Your Authors
4. Ways to Use Journal Articles Published by Elsevier
5. How to Design Library Web Sites to Maximize Usability
6. How Libraries Are Training Users on E-resources: Best Practices
7. What Counts & What Doesn’t? An Insider’s Guide to Usage Reports
8. Marketing Library Resources: An Annotated Bibliography

You can download the pamphlets and sign up for the newsletter at
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/librariansinfo.librarians/lc_home

THE STATE OF AMERICA’S LIBRARIES

This report, from the American Library Association, is fairly interesting. Of course it is only about public libraries, but that’s to be expected from ALA. Here are a couple of its findings—and my comments.

“Libraries and librarians are good citizens.” Duh!
“Americans appreciate libraries and librarians.” Yeah, that’s why they pay us so well.
“Libraries are keeping up with the times—and with the public’s needs.” NOT!

Mean librarian salaries, 2005:
“Director $78,054; Department head $55,833; Supervisor $44,324; Non-supervising librarian $47,246; Beginning librarian $36,486.” How does this compare to what you are making?

Read the executive summary at http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2006/march2006/stateoflibraries.htm

THERE’S A NEW BLOG IN TOWN

If you’re interested in marketing—and if you aren’t, you should be—add Daily Fix to the list of blogs you follow. It’s from MarketingProfs.com. (Thanks to Jill Stover of Library Marketing—Thinking Outside the Book for the heads up.)

URLs:
Daily Fix: http://blog.marketingprofs.com/
MarketingProfs.com: http://www.marketingprofs.com/
Library Marketing—Thinking Outside the Book: http://librarymarketing.blogspot.com/

WHAT IS READING, ANYWAY?

There’s a fascinating post on It’s All Good discussing how you define reading. For instance, “If you are looking at a graphic novel—that does not have any text on the page—are you still reading?”

Check it out at http://scanblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/reading-by-any-other-name-doth-smell.html

10 BEST INTERNET SPOOFS

This one is just for fun. Drew Curtis of Fark.com has collected ten of the most well known Internet hoaxes, complete with photos. It's on Wired News. Did you fall for any of them?

URL: http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/internetspoofs/

A TAXONOMY OF LEGAL BLOGS

3L Epiphany, from Ian Best, a third year law student at Moritz College of Law (Ohio State University), is most likely the first law student blog in the country to receive academic credit. He created it primarily to study the growing phenomenon of legal blogs, the weblogs of lawyers, law professors, and law students; to learn the practical aspects of blogging; to demonstrate the potential uses of a law student blog as a research tool; and to provide a comprehensive taxonomy of legal blogs as an online service to the legal profession. “I believe that the blogosphere suffers from a lack of an efficient infrastructure. 3L Epiphany will exemplify a cohesive system for organizing legal blogs.”

Here is the outline of the taxonomy. If you go to his blog, you can click on each category and be taken to a list of blogs (or blawgs, as law blogs are often called) that fit into it. Then you can click on the individual blogs. I didn’t’ count the total number of blogs, but there are lots of them.

Ian has done the library and law professions a great service by creating this taxonomy. Go, click, enjoy, tell your friends!

I. General Blogs: advice for lawyers and law firms, general legal blogs, general blogs (law and culture, economics, politics, etc.)
II. Blogs Categorized by Legal Specialty
III. Blogs Categorized by Law or Legal Event: case blogs, statute blogs, trial blogs
IV. Blogs Categorized by Jurisdictional Scope: state blogs, Federal circuit blogs, US Supreme Court blogs
V. Blogs Categorized by Author/Publisher: anonymous blogs, association blogs, blogs by judges, book supplement blogs, class and student group blogs, institute blogs, law firm blogs (listed by blog, listed by firm), law journal blogs, law library and librarian blogs, law professor blogs, lawyer webjournals, newspaper blogs
VI. Blogs Categorized by Number of Contributors: group blogs
VII. Miscellaneous Blogs Categorized by Topic: blogs about judges, event blogs, fictional blogs, humor blogs
VIII. Collections of Legal Blogs: blog post collections, legal blog collections, legal blog networks

URL: http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/03/a_taxonomy_of_l.html