Social Media Policies

A while back, I posted about Twitter policies. That piece got some great comments, so I suggest that you read the whole thing.

Since then, I have found several additional resources and thoughts on the topic:

• The CIO (Chief Information Officer) of a health care company [in central and northern Wisconsin] has posted a thoughtful compilation of his organizations thoughts and policies on his blog.
• The Ottawa Public Library (Ottawa, Canada) has posted its full social media policy (as a PDF file).
• The High Tech Dad blog has a great post on how to craft a policy. (Each point of the policy is short enough to be a Twitter post!)
• Ellyssa Kroski (who also blogs at iLibrarian) has written an article for School Library Journal (October 1, 2009) which is still applicable to public libraries. I recommend it.

A great deal is happening in this area, and happening quickly. I hope to find more policies before long.

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.

More Seasonal/Weather reflections

I re-reading my last post, I realized that I had forgotten to mention another observation which is more related to the local weather conditions. This summer was a "dry" summer -- by local standards. Areas which were normally swampy/marshy were drying up.

Over the past few weeks it has rained a great deal. (To me if "feels" like the winter rainy season I remembered from my years in the desert of Tucson.) On Wednesday (that wonderfully warm and sunny day), there was a great deal of water in places that had been dry. There was water in the median (in the grassy areas, as well as on the bridges). It had turned into a wet world again.

The water went down over the course of the week. But last night it rained heavily at times, and pretty steadily over the course of the night. I expect to see that water again on Monday, since the weather forecasts are for more rain this weekend. (And yes, I much prefer rain to snow! Current temp [Sat, 8:30 am local time] 46....forecast, rain.)

Seasons

A recent stauts update on Facebook commented that about 75% of the updates in the past day or so had to do with weather. That ties in well with a reflection I had this morning.

I was gone for the Thanksgiving holiday, and had only one day back doing the commute before I was again away and then off. Tuesday was a crappy weather day, warmish, but rainy and windy. Driving to work in the morning I leave in the dark, and going home is the same.

Today, because the sun was up (and out) for the last half of the commute, I saw some things which I had not noticed before. First was the leaves on the trees. There were some trees which had lost their leaves, and others with brown instead of green. The was the occasional swamp maple (with the emphasis on swamp!) with its red or red/brown leaves. It was the first time that I really began to believe that it is fall.

It is interesting how our perceptions of the seasons depend on these visual cues. The days have been getting shorter. (And don't start on the annual, pointless and useless time change fiasco...) But certainly sitting in my office, with its floor to ceiling windows looking out on the Spanish oaks with all their leaves, it does not feel much like fall! It took seeing the reds of the maples for me to (finally) realize that fall is here.

A final note about periodicity for this blog. You will see fewer posts, at least for a while. It is related to what is happening in my life. Most of it is good, and you will see conference posts when those seasons begin again (Midwinter, LLA, etc.)

The role of publishers and libraries

My friend Rory Litwin does an excellent, concise, and thoughtful analysis of the role of publishers. he links it to the role of libraries.

Rory is an interesting person, and knows both sides as a librarian in Duluth (MN) and as the owner(?) of Litwin Books LLC which publishes books and has as its imprint, Library Juice Press.