Information Center Connections

The rise of infographics

Infographics have become ubiquitous, and with good reason.

For one, they are very often pretty to look at. I've seen all sorts of designs...flow charts, circles, rainbows, maps.  Easy on the eyes. (That's the "graphic" part.)

And the information that's presented is in bite-size portions, easy to scan and digest. Concise. A way to combine and display data to show results and/or tell a story. And, importantly, the information is cited.

Have you thought about how your information center could use infographics to present industry or research information? To market to your clients? To explain a new process or service (either for internal use or for clients/students)?

Here are a few that I found particularly striking and relevant:

+ Anatomy of a librarian

+ A librarian's worth

+ The metadata universe (zoom to view the detail)

+ Usability guide

+ The importance of online training

+ Looking forward to Thanksgiving

 

Now, how to create them? Here are a few resource lists to get you started, plus step-by-step guidance:

+ Suggestions from Problogger

+ Suggestions from Social Networking Librarian

+ Suggestions from Stephen Abram

 

If you see interesting infographics during your travels (or search for them; Visual.ly is a good creating and finding tool), file/bookmark/save them. Let them serve as inspiration for your own storytelling and information sharing.

Have you used infographics to tout your services or present information? If so, tell us the results and how you did it.

Librarian Bakes Cake

It's a fact:  attendance at training sessions, open houses, and lunch-and-learns will be higher if you serve food.

Did you use National Bundt Day to call attention to your information center's services? I did!

Mary the Food Librarian baked 30 bundts in 30 days for National Bundt Day.  Take a look at her baking adventures (with recipes!) on her blog.

Mary the Food Librarian and the Bundts

Food Librarian and bundt-lover Mary (@foodlibrarian) is celebrating National Bundt Day, November 15th, by making 30 bundt cakes in the days leading up to that landmark day.

Mary's blog was featured in the Info Sites column in Information Outlook a while back, and I've continued to enjoy her food adventures.

Will you join me (a chocolate bundt for sure) and many of Mary's other followers in baking a bundt for November 15th? Mary is offering an "I Like Big Bundts" button for participants who submit their information and a picture of the celebratory bundt.

I like big bundts...I cannot lie!

Federal library world updates

The Federal Library Directory is a new resource of incredible value.

The directory, organized by FLICC, is searchable and provides detailed information about more than 1,000 U.S. federal libraries worldwide. Contact information, available services, and welcome audiences are listed, among many other characteristics of interest.

Read more about it in the press release.

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As you may know, GPO Access, the federal government's site for documents and reports, is being replaced by FDsys.  The transition has begun, and no new materials will be added to the old site. That site will be "retired" during the 2012 fiscal year, specific date yet undetermined.

FDsys stands for "Federal Digital System" and it is also a product of the U.S. Government Printing Office. The system provides access to information products from all three government branches, including fulltext documents and metadata.

Learn more about this resource on the FDsys site.

Add the HBR Blog Network to your reading list

You may not sit down to read each issue of Harvard Business Review (although we should), but I suggest making time for the HBR Blog Network.

Recently, I wrote about an HBR post on procrastination, and I've been tempted a few times since to write about other topics that have been featured on the HBR site. I find the posts to be informative, interesting, and not so long that I can't spare a few minutes to open myself to the wisdom of the HBR blog writers.

You'll find topics that span the organizational experience. Not all will be 100% relevant to your situation, but the posts will give you a glimpse of the wider world in which we live, work, and negotiate.

Posts on customer service and business practices and their implications (let's reflect on the recent activities of Netflix and Bank of America) instruct us about how business behaves (or doesn't). We can learn how to work productively with others (amidst dreaded office politics), and how we can successfully (and without bloodshed) evaluate the performance of our direct reports. We all need to know how to communicate and work most effectively.

Updates from the HBR Blog Network are available through e-mail and RSS.

Procrastination is not inevitable

Hmm...hard to believe it.  But that's what Amy Gallo has to say in the HBR blog post "Stop Procrastinating...Now."

We are all victims/willing participants in the procrastination game.  I do my best cleaning (desk, laundry, house) when I'm avoiding an even less desirable task. 

So, what does Ms. Gallo suggest?  Just a few strategies to help us make progress and feel good:

1.  Figure out why.  Two ideas here...it's something we don't like to do, or something we don't know how to do.  Personally, this won't help me get the job done, but it might work for some.

2.  Set deadlines.  Break the task into steps.  I can relate to this one.  I'm a list maker.  I get a huge feeling of accomplishment if I can cross something off a list.  Perhaps create a morning list, one for the day, or one for the week...whatever makes sense for your work flow or project.  Don't be discouraged by having to add things to your list...just keep working and crossing things off.  And accept that the list will never be complete.

3.  Increase the rewards.  Create little incentives like snack breaks, walks around the block, listening to music.  Did I mention snacks?

4.  Involve others.  Gallo mentions going to colleagues for advice, input.  Here, my suggestion is that if you own up to something externally you are more likely to do it.  Can't complete that paragraph about a new info center service?  Ask a colleague to review it.  Hate to exercise?  Walk with a friend. 

5.  Habit habit habit.  Take control of the situation, think about it, make an effort to do the job.  Focus.  Creating new patterns helps us move away from the mind games we play.  True accomplishment is much more rewarding than even a neat desk.

Now, get to work.  Open that e-mail you've been avoiding.  Get working on that budget. Then pat yourself on the back.

How do YOU handle procrastination?  Do you celebrate it?  Or have you conquered it?

Whom do you follow?

Do you tweet?  Do you want to tweet?  Or, would you prefer to just follow?

Twitter is a great way to keep up with industry developments, find resources, and pick up a tip or two from colleagues.  I like the immediacy of it.

Here are some suggestions for those in the info industry world:

@mashable:  social media stories and tips
@graubart:  Barry Graubart, smart and witty digital media guru
@copyrightclear:  Copyright Clearance Center, for news and other developments
@jill_hw:  Jill Hurst-Wahl, LIS professor, author, speaker; she seems to be everywhere!
@jafurtado:  Jose Afonso Furtado, for an international perspective on the information world
@librarycongress:  Library of Congress.  Enough said.
@lisnews:  All the LIS news that fits into 140 characters
@scottabel:  Content strategy

 

And other tweeters I enjoy:

@ebertchicago:  Roger Ebert, movie review guy and social commentator
@nilofer:  Innovation evangelist Nilofer Merchant
@James_Kane:  The guy who knows everything about loyalty
@chrisbrogan:  Business consultant with some great ideas
@davidlebovitz:  American chef living in France with keen observations about people and food 

 

What are your follow suggestions?  Besides me, @triviachick, of course.

9/11 eCollection from ebrary

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, ebrary has created an eCollection of 9/11 related-resources that are freely available now through the month of September.

The collection includes 15 ebooks, which are browsable and searchable. 

For a full list of titles, visit the eCollection.

Did you know that ebrary offers other open access collections?  Find them here!

Technical Standards and You

Standards are part of our daily lives. They can be found at home, in our car, at work and in cyberspace.  We wouldn’t have email without standards.  Standards not only formally document technical criteria, methods, practices and practices, they allow companies and individuals to save money, accelerate projects and make better solutions.

Technical standards are up for review every five years which makes the revision process long and slow. Different organizations focus on reviewing, enhancing and proposing standards on different topics. In the library world, NISO, W3C, and Library of Congress are the standards organizations helping to define epublication, metadata, linked data, and CSS standards (to just name a few).

SLA has a Technical Standards Committee whose focus is to share standards activities from various organizations and provide educational opportunities about the standards, as well.  In the past, this committee has also voted on NISO standards on behalf of SLA. 

If you are interested in technical standards or tasked with implementing them in your organization, join the open SLA Technical Standards discussion list.  Subscription instructions are at the bottom of the committee's page. 

Look for educational opportunities about technical standards in the upcoming months. If you have suggestions for a specific technical standard you would like to learn more about or standards topics you think are important to information professionals, let us know by contacting any committee member.

App Happy

Unfortunately I had to miss "60 Apps in 60 Minutes" at SLA 2011, but Scott Brown and Joe Murphy have posted their presentation on SlideShare.  Yay!

First, an aside about apps.  According to Flurry (via TechCrunch), time spent on apps daily has now surpassed time spent on the Web (on a computer).  There are more sessions using apps, rather than longer sessions.  What a revolution.  And I bet its not all Angry Birds.  Business Insider, however, questions Flurry's analysis.  Take a look at both and see what you think.

The apps they include are listed in categories for easy findability, and librarians/info pros have a section all their own.

Some of what they covered:

Buzz Deck:  updates from social networks and other sites

Reuters News Pro:  news, company, and financial info

GoodReads:  book recommendations and discussions (app here)

Instapaper:  save web pages for reading later

Wi-Fi Finder:  does what it says it does

MobileRSS:  Google Reader for the iFamily

TweetDeck and the more robust HootSuite for managing all those Twitter messages

 

What are your favorite apps?  And which do you use for info center services?