Google Reader, Revisited

A recent post on 3 Great Ways To Read Your Google Reader Feeds [via AL Direct] reminded me that I should revisit the topic of Google Reader.

Four years ago (almost exactly) I wrote about my first experiences with Google Reader. I was not a happy camper. I had some colloquy with colleagues about tips and techniques for using Google Reader. I tried a second time, and was still unhappy. I remained a Bloglines user for a long time. Well, Bloglines essentially went away.

I now use Google Reader, pretty exclusively, to follow the 164 blogs that I care about.

I think Google Reader has changed some. What else has changed is that I now use Gmail for most of my personal email. It has the handy little link which will automatically open Google Reader. That makes it incredibly easy to read the blogs. As a result, I am very caught up, and don't mind (as much) the assumption that you want to read the latest posting first. I have set several up (manually) to post with the oldest first, and - for now - I am content.

I ran across my posts, and realized that I should "fess up" to having been converted, later rather than sooner.

First of the Year links

I have been back at work for more than a week, and finally feel like I am getting caught up. Here are some of the things I found of interest since I returned:

First, from one of my new favorite, thoughtful bloggers (along with Walt Crawford, Meredith Farkas, Stephen Abram, and a number of others...) Eric Hellman. To close out the year, he talked about "catastrophic future of libraries" and concluded with the forceful statement:

In 2011, let's build things that change the system dynamics.

He also posted about Bridging the eBook-Library System Divide. His post talks about some of the issues facing libraries with providing ebooks, and still keeping their "brand" alive.

I guess that Meredith and I must have been thinking along the same lines, since the day after I posted about the LITA flap, she added thoughtful comments including reflections on her experience with the ACRL Virtual Conference committee.

Iris Jastram has been posting somewhat less frequently than she once did, however, when she "talks," I always sit up and pay attention. One of her more recent posts was about searching, databases, and how we (or for her, undergraduates) look for information. One of the key quotes: "Search is all about term matching, and terms are often the hardest thing for undergraduates to harness." Two other key quotes/thoughts:

1. Google Scholar is very forgiving of bad searching. It will nearly always give you something, even if you enter “impact of cell phones on globalization” into the search box.
2. Disciplinary databases are not nearly as forgiving of bad searching, so they may be pretty intimidating places to start. Where they excel, however, is in foregrounding those elusive, mysterious, and powerful terms that students need so badly if they’re going to revise their searches and gather more disciplinarily relevant material.

This was driven home to me today when a patron came to the desk to ask for "books for women over 50." How do you find that? They are most often classified with the other books on a more specific topic. What did I do? Well, it is not perfect, but I started by doing a "Power" search with the keyword "women" and the phrase in keyword as "over 50." Now, Library of Congress Subject Headings have some issues, and Sandy Berman was often a vocal critic, but I was able to identify that there is an LC subject heading "Middle aged women -- United States -- Life skills guides." Now, I am not a fan of the heading, but it certainly helped me to identify some items to meet that patron's needs. And, it is all about searching, and finding the right terms.

And then there was the whole Bloglines/Delicious debacle towards the end of last year. Stephen Abram, like me, now reads his RSS feeds in Google Reader. Almost three years ago (in 2007), I tried it, and didn't like it. I even went back, after some conversation, and tried it again. Well, I admit that I did not try to move to the new Bloglines platform, and based on Stephen's experience, I am glad that I didn't. Delicious was dead, then it wasn't. I appreciate Stephen's comments on it and the alternatives.

And a final post from Stephen on change within an organization which refers to a FastCompany post and new book: Ten Questions Every Game Changer Must Answer.

David Lee King is doing a series of posts about how to use current technology to do presentations. It is called: "10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me." He does not use PowerPoint, but certainly everything he says can be done in PowerPoint. Tip #2 is one that I use for my web presentations, presenter notes. I recommend the whole series (which is not finished yet!).

ALA has a library. It serves as the resource for ALA staff and volunteer leaders, but it often gets questions from outside that sphere. American Libraries has a feed which often includes questions that the Library receives, a recent one was about recommended web sites for libraries.

One of the non-library blogs I follow is called Principled Innovation. Jeff De Cagna posts on ideas to help organizations/associations to deal with change. This is a recent post which is the first of a series and a response to a white paper for the Wisconsin Society for Association Executives.

Now, in my various travels recently I have neither had the full body scan nor pat down. But I have to admit liking these items:

• In November, George Stroumboulopoulos blogged about 4th Ammendment Underwear;
• Here is a link to the official sale site; and
• Finally a t-shirt that says "I got to Second Base with a TSA Screener."

ALA Executive Board member Courtney Young wrote a great post on running for ALA Council. You most likely have until the end of the month to get your petition with 25 signatures in to appear on the ballot this spring.

And in a final moment of randomness, the State of Connecticut has cut all funding for tourism promotion. As a result, they dropped the state's membership in Discover New England. So the new map simply omits Connecticut from the map.....read it here.

Links - Feb/March and LLA warning

Well, it is that time of year again, LLA (Louisiana Library Association) Annual Conference. Look for blog posts on Thursday and Friday.

You have to love this title: Data, data everywhere as a special report from the Economist.

I forget where I picked this up (probably Dorothea Salvo) about Open Access. I am only part way through reading it, but the opening analogy/story sure caught my attention.

Iris does a great job at Pegasus Librarian, and since this is "statistics time of year" for me (parish libraries are submitting their annual statistics, due, by law, by April 1), the title How Big is My Library caught my eye.

WebJunction is hosting a wiki and discussion on the future of libraries. Now I just need to find the time to read it!

Now, I don't do cataloging, and it has been a long time since I did any. I also have not followed the development of FRBR and RDA, except in a very broad way. Jennifer Bowen (of the University of Rochester [NY]) has, and has written a pretty clear article on metadata, libraries and the cataloging principles for ALA TechSource.

Eric Hellman had the opportunity to attend the Google settlement hearing and wrote a nice summary (which has links to other summaries).

I recently updated my"ALA 101" posts to reflect name changes in divisions. April Bunn, Media Specialist, has written in Library Garden about the fact that AASL is going back to calling themselves librarians! [My favorite job title was when I was "City Librarian!"]

Peter Bromberg has an interesting take on privacy (also in Library Garden).

Jenny Levine (the tech maven on staff at ALA) has a great post on Library 2.0 including some of the recent discussions. (Like Andy Woodworth's "Deconstructing Library 2.0.")

Starr Hoffman, in geeky artist librarian, has a long (for her) post on the academic library mission. Maybe it is the work I have been doing on MPOW's planning that is keeping me so in tune with this topic, but there are some good thoughts here.

Two web items from AARP (yes, I am that old!). Both relate to changes in the workforce:

1. Communication styles vary between generations; and
2. The demographics of the workforce are changing.
   

One of the themes I used to hear from NextGen librarians was about their insecurity in feeling like they don't really know what they are doing. Most of us will admit that there have been times when each of us has felt that way (no matter which "Gen" you fall into!). Steve Schwartz has written an interesting post on this theme.

This probably falls into the category of folks not completely thinking through all of the implications of a name: iMaxi: Finally, the iPad Gets the Protection it Deserves

One of my college buddies has co-written a very long, thoughtful post about the health care conversation. I am not sure I agree with it all, but it is important to pay attention to the thoughtful items!

This piece talks about how to find things inside slide presentations posted on the 'net. It would seem to be a useful resource.

Dorothea Salvo did something that I should probably do, but won't until after the weekend. She expicitly talks about the shift in focus of her blog, and even edited the tag line. [Stay tuned, folks!]

October/November/December Links

The Wall Street Journal article on the end of email certainly has generated comment both inside of and outside of the library community. I think that it overstates the case. I remember years ago having a discussion about "push vs. pull" of information. There are times when if it is not pushed to me (i.e. email), then I am likely to not get it or to act on it.

LibraryLaw Blog has some great info for librarians on the complexity of laws as they apply to us. There is a new-ish, but scary post which talks about the incredible narrowing of the meaning of educational fair use.

I haven't checked this out, but I trust the Librarian in Black implicitly. She wrote about how to back up data from some of the social networking sites.

I found this tip on how to keep Windows (or Windoze, as Mac fans used to write) from automatically rebooting when you don't want it to. [Note to self: Do this on your personal laptop!]

Dorothea Salo (formerly Caveat Lector, now Book of Trogool), has a great series on library thinking and terminology around organizing. The first was The Classical Librarian; the second was The Humble Index; the third was simply Classification; and the last (which is what caught my eye at last) was Classification and a Bit of Subject Analysis. All are well worth reading, and you should add her to your "usual list of subjects" if you are a librarian.

Interesting story in the Chicago Tribune which was posted to PUBLIB. Comments there ranged from decrying flagrant copyright violations to "just" infringement. Read the article, PUBLIB archives are here , posts are under "Chicago Tribune Article."

Other links floating around include an interesting article on getting past cut and paste, and getting students to think about the meaning of what they find on the web.

It is tough when technology changes faster than the rules, here are some thoughts on that.

This post is about smoking and where in the US it happens. But it is also an interesting way to to look at statistics and present them in some different ways.

From a more morbid perspective, what happens to your social networking accounts when you die? Here are some of the answers.

ALA now has the ability to do electronic petitions to run for office! I have signed one already. And in spite of what the Annoyed Librarian says (she says it was December 1 - and she is so wrong!), the deadline is January 29, 2010

In the most recent news, both Kirkus and Editor and Publisher are about to be defunct. Here is the announcement of the death of Kirkus, and a memorial.

End of September /early October links

Talking about "ownership," Helene Blowers has an interesting post on models of ownership as it relates to technology and devices

Academic library articles seemed to hit me a bit recently:

Jenica Rogers is the library director at SUNY-Potsdam, the alma mater of one of my brothers (and his charming wife). She has written about "who owns the [academic] library."

Involved Academic Library Administrator

Libraries of the future

I am going to link to Stephen Abram, excerpts of an interesting article on blogging in the public sector.

TechEssence has a great post of the Top 10 Things Library Administrators Should Know about Technology

There were two posts about OAI-ster (which I admit to only vaguely understanding). The first talks about OCLC taking over the UM project, the second is a slight (to my mind) clarification.

I read Dorothea Salvo for many reasons, including her cogent thoughts about the role of libraries in saving digital documents. I would characterize a recent post as being about meta-data even though she calls it "Classification."

I found a new blog --- The Banned Librarian -- interesting stuff.

On Twitter, I have been following the author of the blog "Getting Boys to Read." He has a good post about creating a vision for the library.

There have been lots of comments about the Massachusetts private school Cushing Academy and its plan to essentially disband its library. Lisa Gold and Andy from New Jersey's Burlington County Library both have interesting comments. Lisa's are titled "When I look at books..." (which is a quote from the Cushing Headmaster), and Andy's are called "Library Beyond Print."

Official ALA stuff:

PLA's Advocacy Kit is available, here is the note from the PLA blog.

They were called the "Young Turks" group to begin with, but are now Young Librarians. Participate as appropriate.

Food (always an important topic in New Orleans): Fried Chicken and Waffles?

For fun, and distraction.

Last Thursday (my birthday) I got this. (Thanks Megan)

I have written about some of my experiences with the American health care system (and won't link to them here). Karen Schneider has an insightful post about the current debate.

Links, links, links, links....

Happy 10th birthday Blogger!

• For those of us who have trouble on Mondays!
  

• Next Monday, though....
  

• And job seeking advice about Twitter
  

• Some folks just don't get the web, and the Associated Press is one...
  

• More e-book predictions...
  

• And more comments on the digital divide
  

• Dorothea Salvo writes on digital repositories, and is always worth reading.
  

• Good news on e-book formats
  

• You can't blog, flickr, or twitter from college stadia? Can anyone say "First ammendment?" or "Prior restraint"? I am waiting for the first case!

• A great website on getting boys to read -- and you can follow on Twitter, too
  

• A newly named inherent behavior: Seeking [from Slate]

• The danger of the Google settlement for libraries [LibraryLaw Blog]

• Online education beats the classroom?

• More than just death by PowerPoint, this talks about what the errors/problems are

Here is a "two-fer:" first it talks about the positive impact of high-speed [broadband] access on rural areas. But then I looked at the map which shows number of broadband providers. When I look at a map like this, I often focus on the places that I know about (mostly where I have lived). So, for example in both most of northern Maine, and in a tiny swatch of southern Arizona there are no providers. Well, a lot of that northern Maine is woods! I have canoed through some of that territory, there are really no roads, and only the hardiest of people. The southern Arizona piece is more problematic, but it sure looks to me like it is the reservation which is just to the west (and slightly south) of Tucson. When I lived there it was the Papago Reservation, but it is now called Tohono O'odham.

Library Journal needs to understand

Much more about blogging and their audience.

First of all, the typeface on their web pages is way too small. It looks like about 7 point type, and then, there is no way to enlarge it!

Second, the site is so ad heavy that it takes forever to load.

Third, their linking! If you are on a page where in the right (well, actual, middle because there is the column of ads) and click on one of the "Recent Posts," where do you go? To a whole page of brief announcements of the recent posts, and the one you clicked on may or may not be visible! If you want to read the whole post, you have to click AGAIN!

Then, for the longer blogs (Blatant Berry, Annoyed Librarian) only the first sentence or so will show up in your blog feed reader. (It might even be 140 characters, I have never bothered to count.)

If it weren't so important to my professional life, I would never go there!

[And that loading thing....one page has been loading the whole time I have been typing this!]

Links from around the web

• Here is a thoughtful post from Helene Blowers about books and print, it has a catchy title, too: Future of the book is not a "container question"

• An interesting article from PW about the Google Book Search Settlement and a panel discussion at New York Public Library

• When you "buy" a download, can you keep it forever? Some think not. Here is an article from boingboing on the topic.

Stephen Abram is always thoughtful. I had saved two posts from him:

1. Streaming video is displacing DVDs
   But I wonder where does that leave the majority in Louisiana who do not have Internet at home?
2. He also has some cogent thoughts on Bing and Yahoo (As he suggests, I have started using Bing.)

More posts

• I picked this up off PUBLIB, where the poster noted that this conservative paper generally is against any taxes and increases in public spending, but does support public libraries. It is an interesting article.

• Archiving the transition of power in Alaska This shows the important role we libraries have in conserving today's information for tomorrow's researchers

• I am a little disappointed that I did not make the Top 100 list, and I have some quibbles, like librarian.net not being in the top 5! But there are some other obviously good choices. There were even a few I had not followed/found.

That's it for now!

The Web, meida delivery and blogging

There has been a confluence of the above topics in not just the tweets I get, or the blogs I real, or even the email I get.

I am on the routing list for Publishers Weekly, and recently read the May 18, 2009 issue which has the interview with Chris Anderson by Andrew Albanese (who has written for Library Journal). This was to highlight Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It is an interesting interview, and I recommend it. At the same time I have a link to Financial Times piece which says "most news websites will charge within a year." It is my memory that the New York Times tried this in the early days, and it failed big time. I know that I don't even like to register to read news, I think that this is a big old FAIL.

On the other hand, Casey Bisson expresses some interesting thoughts in dissecting the old business model of the newspaper business. It is headlined: "Newspaper Business: News was a loss leader!" He talks about trying to monetize the newspaper business, and goes to argue that the Financial Times editor is probably wrong.

Roy Tenant takes the position that print is not dead, in a (usual for him) well-written piece. [He tweeted the other day that there were no comments, I see that there are now seven (7), but make him happy and comment!]

He earlier had a great post on social media pitfalls, and cites the Clinical Reader incident which Iris Jastram covered very completely (and he did not mention...)

Finally, there has been an interesting conversation started by Meredith Farkas called: "W(h)ither blogging and the library blogosphere?" Meredith has been a blogging hero to me, I started reading her blog quite a long while before I started blogging myself. (And I have even had a chance to meet her in person at ALA Annual!) Her comments are cogent, and as interesting has been the conversation on Friend Feed. [Addition 7/23 8:30 am: I should have also noted Iris Jastram's thoughtful piece about the ebb and flow of online social interaction using various tools.]

Links and comments

ALA is coming up at the end of the week. Time to clean off the desk -- actual and virtual!

What counts as "broadband?" Jeff Scott has a good analysis with comments about this. His comment that defining it as one-half of a T-1 line is short-sighted, is insightful. Louisiana was one of the first states to have Internet available to the public in every "main" library in the state. Many are finding that the bandwidth currently provided is not adequate. Many libraries here, and elsewhere I assume, were hoping that the stimulus funding would help them improve network speed. This seems not to be the case.

Annette Day and Hilary Davis have an interesting article about the process of journal selection (and de-selection) for academic libraries in a group blog which I have only recently found: In the Library with a Lead Pipe.

Meredith Farkas is back and continues to be insightful and probably ahead of her time. She talks in a recent post about relying on free/web-based services to deliver critical functions. Her post makes me also think about how is our discussion about things like Library 2.0/Web 2.0 being stored for the future. We can read about the late 19th discussions on the pros and cons of public libraries collecting and circulating fiction because those discussions took place in print. Will library scholars of the end of this century be able to do the same for our discussions? (I'm also going to point to a related/similar discussion imbedded in Walt Crawford's August (?) Cites and Insights. I am sure, since I was reading it in the doctor's office yesterday, that his "Writing about Reading" has influenced my thoughts on Meredith's post.)

I am watching the Google OS situation somewhat closely, in part because we are considering purchasing a "netbook" for our regular travel.

Finally, is my new work love: statistics. In a short (3 minute) TED talk, mathematician Arthur Benjamin talks about the need to redefine the teaching of mathematics. Currently, calculus is the "holy grail" or highest level. He notes that most of us do not use calculus in our daily lives. (Engineers are exempt from this characterization.) However, if everyone had a better understanding of statistics, a lot of us would do better in life.

The link is above....I will try to embed it here:

More Links

I am trying to clean up...and lost stuff...stupid wireless connection. Anyway, this is what you get!

ALA

Five tips for a Better ALA Conference Experience from one of ALA's largest divisions

Getting Virtual: ALA Works to Increase Electronic Member Participation

Broadband, Internet access, etc.

Elderly, poor narrow broadband service gap from the AP

Home Broadband Adoption a Pew Study

Lower Broadband Prices -- but only if there is competition

Stimulus rules are out -- are the easily understood?

Open Access, Copyright, Intellectual Property (IP)

Elsevier is lobbying against Open Access [OK, who is surprised?]

File sharing and Copyright from LIS News -- read the report which is a PDF linked from this

Are Books Dead?

The short answer here is "NO" but you should read the long discussion.

But the Canadian National Archives thinks "MAYBE" since they have stopped buying paper.

Miscellaneous Internet issues

Google antitrust issues

Anonymity on the web -- or not!

Hate speechin the US as opposed to the rest of the world

Don't moon people with cameras (or at least hide your face when you do) -- humor, but with an important point

Search and find magazine articles on Google Book Search (from the source)

Taxes and the Internet: Amazon drops partners to avoid state sales taxes

Truly Miscellaneous

Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

PowerPoint Animations are information killers -- I feel vindicated!

Gender gap continues in the computer world -- even if not in libraries, or is it a reverse gap for us.

Humor, from Robert Benchley -- How to get things done despite procrastination

The BIG picture

Is there a "too big to fail" in the book/library world?

Widening generation gap (from nola.com); original Pew study here

How teens use media is different than how "we" do (Neilsen study)

Links - Week of June 15

One-Third of U.S. Doesn’t Have Broadband
This is a big issue for the US. It also reports "3 percent of Internet subscribers say broadband is not available in their area."

And in the same vein, Free broadband won't entice all It is a British source (BBC), but these two quotes jumped out at me:

"Some 42% of adults said that they had no interest or need for the internet. This so-called self-excluded group tended to be older or retired, with 61% confessing to never having used a computer."

and

"For 30% of those currently offline the main reasons given for that choice was financial or lack of skills."

I have been reading Nicole Engard for several years now, she had two great posts recently:
Librarians as Writers
Phonebook on Facebook

ALA Council has been talking about standards for accreditation off and on for several years. At Midwinter, we passed competences for librarianship, and also sent to the Executive Board a document requesting revisions in the accreditation rules. It is only recently that library educators have sat up to take notice of what was passed, and for some reason, are upset. (Why weren't they upset when a public library director said that he would note hire an LIS grad from his state's flagship university -- and ALA accredited program -- because they did not know enough about libraries!) Here is where you can read and comment about the standards revisions.

I also read Roy Tenant (in print and electronically). He has some interesting comments on Google's new service.

I don't blog anonymously, but there are those who are anonymous/pseudonymous. Here is an interesting controversy in the law library world. And here is another take.

Every once in a while I hear the old story about how Texas could decide to become five (5) states if they want. (Which while it is technically true it is unlikely.) This article talks about another way to "break up" the US (and they call it: devolution).

Whither file sharing, and will the RIAA and music industry ever learn? An old case resurfaces.

Here is an interesting search engine which focuses on credibility, using librarians!!

Good budget news from NYC: Speaker Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg Announce Budget Agreement Council restorations preserve funding for firehouses, 6-day library service and ACS case workers
And in the press release, libraries come ahead of the firefighters!

Links and miscellany

Most recently, I have been collecting interesting links from both Twitter and my Bloglines account. I have gotten into the habit of just leaving the link open in a tab in my browser. Well, it is time to clean up again. Some of the titles are self-evident, but I have added comments to some of them.

And now in categories!

Broadband:

Bringing Broadband to Rural America (the official FCC report)

Broadband Nation. A new blog about broadband issues.

Bringing in Broadband. The issues in one Florida county.

Mapping Broadband. This person/organization may well not be a friend for libraries.

Lobbying the FCC for access and no caps.

New technology and Web 2.0

Paper Highlights Pros and Cons of Twittering at Academic Conferences

"librarians express affection through information"

Resolving the 80/20 dilemma "End users are spending less time on gathering the information they need – but their search failure rate is going up." A great article of importance to all librarians, but this one is focused on special/corporate libraries.

Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment This links to a much longer PDF file on the Cambridge University web site

Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google Cory Doctorow in the Guardian

Study: Unselfish Individuals Benefit in Social Networks

9 simple suggestions for using social media

Twitter in the workplace. This is a presentation for government leaders on the use of Twitter.

Intellectual Property issues (IP)

IP rights and the Blind The US, Canada, and the EU try to limit the rights of blind people to use technology to receive written material -- Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing

IP: File sharing and Copyright. I have not read the full article (a link to the PDF is here), but the summary presents the intellectual property issues in file sharing in a new light. (Hmmm, maybe a full post is coming.)

Publishers are trying to avoid the Music industry's mistakes.

ALA

All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go: A Survey of ALA Emerging Leaders

General Library stuff:

Mommy haven takes a hit in down economy

How to love your library

The 'M' word always has good stuff about library marketing. Nancy Dowd does a good job, this one is on the future of the media we will need to deal with. {Memo to grammar caucus fans...I did that on purpose.}

Darien Library's new brand image was picked up from John Blyberg. Check out the other clients here.

Job seekers at the library. While this is not new, there are some interesting statistics at the end. I also have to comment that when I first looked at this site, I thought I was at NOLA.com which is the site for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Freemium A new way of thinking about library services and charging for them.

The Big Picture

Google takes on Amazon from the New York Times...and it is only for e-books.

Communicating a message. An interesting re-post from Stephen Abram on the differences that the wording of a message can make.

Personal

Free Range Librarian on where she is in her life and in her blogging life. It is actually a little similar to where I am.

Hot flashes -- a new perspective I found this one absolutely fascinating.

Want. Need I say more?

The rise and fall of LSU. I am not completely sure of the author's credentials, but it certainly is an interesting perspective on the positioning of state universities within the state power structure.

Links and miscellany

Somehow, with keeping up on Twitter and blog reading, I seem to have hit "the motherload" today. So, as I sit and wait for the sleep study to begin, here is today's harvest:

27 things to do before a conference. Stephen Abram pointed to this site, which I thought was going to be from him. Chris Brogan looks like someone I know, but in checking out his site, it is clear that I do not know him.

Leaders make the future. Jeff de Cagna of Principled Innovation (a blog I picked up from Mary Ghikas at ALA), did a podcast with the author of this book. There is some good content on the website without listening to the podcast (which I will admit that I have not done).

Stephen Abram also noted an Emmy winning video. Which he picked up from Nancy Dowd's blog about videos.

Google battles Facebook in search. This is a very interesting piece.

EFF on Google Books settlement. Via LIS news, this reproduces most of the text from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Clive Thompson on the future of electronic reading.

Data from the Feds. This looks like a very interesting site. I have not had time to play around with it. I look forward to that and a further report.

Board games and information literacy. My friend Chris Harris, of the Infomancy blog, has written a great article on the relationship of playing board games to information literacy and the AASL information standards.

Summer of Mobile Library Services. Tom Peters has written a great article for ALA Techsource.

Relevancy of Libraries in the Future. This is a thoughtful article from LIS News (I just wish they would give full names of the authors of these longer articles.)

Fiber-Fed Libraries can serve as an agent of recovery. Non-librarian Douglas Streeks has written a great article for BroadbandCensus.com

Global CEO Survey. This is a link to Stephen Abram's summary of this annual survey of global CEOs.

Wireless Substitution. Another post from Stephen Abram about the fact that few folks are connected by land lines.

Miscellaneous Library Links & comments

I haven't posted library stuff in a bit. With my new work schedule, I get up before dawn and drive through the dawn (actually, these days, dawn happens while I am still getting ready) to Baton Rouge, hitting the heavy in-bound traffic around 7:30. After a day at work (no blogging there, please) , I hit the road, and the traffic, at about 4:30. If I am lucky, I get back home by 6:15 or so. Then it is dinner and catching up, and bed fairly early -- 9 pm most nights. So, hence the lacunae.

I have been adding tabs to my Firefox windows both at home and work. It is time to clean them up in a miscellaneous post.

Four new search engines to keep an eye on.

ARRA funds for libraries This is an interesting post from Jeff Scott which focuses more on broadband funding in the Recovery Act. He has done some good work here.

Libraries need more Internet speed. Related to the link above, here is the ALA press release about the need for more speed.

Smartphones versus handsets. This is an interesting article on sales trends. I have a feeling reading articles like this that I am not making full use of what is available on my current device (which I HATE!)

Books born digital. Interesting LJ article about trends in book publishing and the trends that librarians need to follow.

Kindle2 and speech software. This is an interesting take on the Kindle debate and the Authors Guild' successful push to get Amazon to disable the speech abilities of the Kindle. If you know someone who is blind, but computer proficient you may well wonder, as I do, what the big deal is. Speech software is nowhere near the same as a book read by a person. (And since I am now a huge listener, I do know!)

For fun. This is from a local public library blog which has a link to a web site which has a video for each of the elements in the periodic table. I love it!

Library leadership and changes. Stephen Abram of Sirsi/Dynix picked this up on his travels. It is a great article which I suggest you click through and save the PDF. Stephen does a great job. The seven imperatives of library leadership may yet get a full post from me.

In library news:

Stupid Library Tricks. This is a great story of bureaucracy run amok! [Thanks again, Stephen.]

Bad news about salaries. I know that library administrators sometimes take a beating on salaries. This LJ article notes both the flatness of the library organization in Seattle, and our cost effectiveness compared with other departments.

The Law of Unintended Consequences, Oprah and KFC. My friend Jessamyn does a great summary here. Last Saturday (May 16, ten days after Jessamyn wrote), I was in a local KFC where they were STILL handing out rain checks for the grilled chicken. (I am glad I wasn't planning on eating grilled chicken!)

Twitter and Libraries. There is a great, link-rich post about how to effectively use Twitter.

Extreme Customer Service. Great article by David Lee King about a library that I knew fairly well in Connecticut. I haven't been there in a number of years, but the philosophy of extreme customer service is one that Library Director Louise Berry has espoused for many years.

Google Books Settlement. I forget where I picked up this link, and I have read a some about the settlement. This is an interesting article about Internet Archive and its view.

That's the wrap-up for now. [And I started this post two days ago, and it took until today to get it up.]

What are Your TechNOTs?

Rochelle Hartman has challenged us.

So, I was late to blogging. Actually, I was even late to email. It wasn't until I left Wilton, and started at SCLC that I got my first email account. (That was 13 years ago!) Certainly, my reluctance to email has changed. And I have more or less adopted blogging. However, I'll admit that while I started the year with a "cleaned up" Bloglines account, lately it hovers around 500 unread posts. (Of course, I could drop some of the 156 feeds....but that is down from almost 200!)

However, I think I have two or three IM accounts which I do not use. (I don't think I have logged on in a year or so.) I also have not figured out what "Twitter" is all about. I haven't tried.

I am on Facebook, and even do stuff there periodically, but my LinkdIn and Plaxo accounts are pretty much dormant. There may even be some others which I have signed up for, and have not used for a while. Every once in a while I still find an account of one kind or another which still has an old email (either @brdgprtpl.lib.us or @bridgeportpubliclibrary.org) or my old Connecticut address.

So that is my confession

Why am I a Librarian

Well, Walt Crawford did not tag me, but I am going to take up both parts of his challenge. I will answer the question, and also, like my semi-hero Walt, not "tag" anyone. I am again behind in reading my feeds, but so far I have read the posts from Iris, Rikhei, and Steve Lawson.

My answer is short: Miss (Betty) Osborn and Mrs. Carson.

As a child I spent a lot of time at the library and reading. Miss Osborn was the children's librarian, and took an interest in me. She later became the Library Director, and hired me as a page/shelver. The longer I was there, the more responsibilities she gave me. She talked about professional association activities and was active in the New England Library Association. She went to the (now legendary) annual conferences at Wentworth-by-the-Sea.

Mrs. Carson was my supervisor at my financial aid provided job in the library at Brown. I started in the Biological Sciences Library which, in the December of my freshman year moved into a new building with the Physical Sciences Library -- the now Sciences Library. I guess because I was willing to work hard and work more, I got to be part of the team which helped get all the books on the right floors. (We were integrating the collections.)

As I stuck it out over the years, I was given more responsibility. By the end of my four years, I was often in charge of the service desks for the last couple of hours of operation. All my supervisors encouraged me. Mrs. Carson wrote a letter of recommendation when I was applying to schools and for the NELA scholarship (which I did *not* get). I had the opportunity a couple of times to go back and thank her for her support.

I started grad school one week to the day after my graduation from college. From there on it has been a straight shot. Although there were times when I thought about, and even explored, other options. But none of them felt as "right" as librarianship.

Once working in libraries, I knew I wanted to become a Library Director. I wondered why some decisions were made the way they were. I wanted to have some of that control. I also wanted to share why things are the way they are with my staff. So, back in 1985 when I had the opportunity, I jumped and became a director. It was a small enough library that during my tenure there I worked the circ desk to pitch in, and worked regular shifts on the reference desk.

I left that position and took one running a multi-type library organization. It is what has taken me away from direct public service, but that was an incredible learning experience about other types of libraries, and gave me the opportunity (and push) to become involved in professional associations. Since then, I have been the director of large enough libraries that I do not work the desk. Let's face it, while I still have the customer service skills, I no longer have the technical skills, and don't have the time to learn them.

I love being a director. It fits my personality and style. I get to be out in the community talking about the library and what we can do. I do advocacy on a daily basis, and love it. I cannot picture myself doing anything else -- except maybe teaching how to do this.

[Note: I could not get Walt's blog to come up...I got the address for the hot link from the cached version in Yahoo!]

Library 2.0: Different visions

In reading my Bloglines (no, I have not looked at Bloglines Beta yet), I found two interesting and contrasting posts.

David Lee King proposes a revision to his visual presentation of a Library and Library 2.0 ideas. While his first showed a spectrum, and placed people and ideas along that spectrum, the two dimensionality of the line does not reflect what the whole Library 2.0 movement is about.

At the same time, the Annoyed Librarian writes her posts under an anonymous pseudonym. [This bugs John N. Berry III, and I guess that is why I like it!] Some of Annoyed's posts are about the public, and there is more than a little sarcasm thrown in. On the other hand, how many of us, at one time or another, have not had (but not expressed) thoughts just like Annoyed? Not so many hands raised. This time Annoyed hits the mark (or at least a little closer) with "The Cult of the Twopointopia." It is not "either/or," I like to think of it as "both/and." We have new tools, we need to use them.

I will note, that Annoyed does use a healthy (well, maybe even more than a healthy) dose of sarcasm in her writing. But don't let that put you off. I think most folks dealing with Library 2.0 issues are somewhere between the two extremes of feelings on the topic.

Incredibly funny video

Michael Porter (aka Libraryman) posted this incredibly funny video clip under the title: "Disco Dancing for Peace in the Biblioblogosphere."

There is music, and be prepared to laugh!

Addicted to Blogging

I picked this up from Stephen Abram. I am surprised that I am only 1% point lower than he is!

84%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Dating Site

[I tried to add an tag, unsuccessfully, so....it says "I am 84% addicted to blogging."]