Information Center Connections

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?

Skills we all need

On the heels of SLA 2011, I discovered this series of posts from the Atlantic on critical skills for the future workforce.  The Institute for the Future outlined these ten competencies in Future Work Skills 2020. 

1.  Sense-making...aka "critical thinking."  Humans have this ability over computers, which are ubiquitous but without the ability to understand meaning and delve deeper.

2.  Social intelligence.  Connecting and interacting and the development of relationships with appropriate responses.

3.  Novel and adaptive thinking.  Haven't information professionals been called upon to be flexible?  We need to go where the need for our expertise and experience is apparent.  And we also need to create opportunities and offer services even where it is not.

4.  Cross-cultural competency.  The ability to work within diversity across ethnicities, experience, skills.

5.  Computational thinking.  What value can be added to data to make it useful?  It's no longer just research...it's analysis.

6.  New media literacy.  Communication and information sharing in all directions.  Utter engagement.  Many of us are here, but we can always do better to integrate new tools into our processes and services.

7.  Transdisciplinarity.  Gone are the days of one specialty and one employer.  Our skills and understanding must continue to evolve to keep pace with the changes in technology, disciplines, and industries.  Mashups at the career level, really.

8.  Design mindset.  How do you get there from here?  Develop tasks and construct plans to get your information center or information business where it needs to go.  There are no rules.

9.  Cognitive load management.  Information overload.  What's critical to your and to your clients and what's noise?  Filter, then filter some more.   

10.  Virtual collaboration.  Activities and processes have moved from that brick building over there to, well, everywhere and anywhere.  It's more than just e-mail...it's maintaining operations and services across walls and borders.

Do you have these skills?  If not, how will you get them?  SLA Webinars and conference CEs are two ways to keep your skills sharp and growing.  What is happening in your SLA chapter?  Take advantage of local programs to network, exchange ideas, and learn through virtual and onsite professional development programs. 

If you do have these skills...share them with others.  Help bring the profession forward for future success.

This and that: some resources to check out

A few items of interest to info pros and friends:

The Webby Awards have been around for 15 years.  Review the latest list of nominees and winners in almost 70 categories.  Any familiar sites on there?  How does your organization's site measure up?

Zanran is a search engine for data and statistics.  Why not try it if you are looking for that type of information...let's broaden our search horizons!  Looks promising with pop-up results and solid sources of data.  Search Engine Land published a review that's worth a look.

Have a topic and need to find a feed?  Take a look at RSS Search Engine.  Use Google search syntax to limit your results.

Info overload revisited

Did you see the Newsweek article "I Can't Think"?  Information overload can get the best of us to the point of what author Susan Begley calls info-paralysis.  Yep.  Excellent article...take a look when you have a few minutes.

This blog actually started with a post on information overload (aside: I now have 135 messages in my inbox with little hope of seeing my eternal goal of 30 anytime soon), and it seems only to have gotten worse across the board. Twitter, anyone?

Last August, Click U offered two webinars that promised some hope.  Sarah Houghton-Jan (@TheLiB), now the assistant director of the San Rafael Public Library and also known as the Librarian in Black, presented two webinars called "Battling Information Overload."  She offered techniques and tools to get you through the deluge.  Check them out in the replays section of the Click U site, under the 2010 heading "Personal Improvement."

Get to it...don't let info-paralysis get to you.

 

The best intranets

Don't you love "best of" lists?  Top 10/25/101 lists?  From the writer's perspective, it's a concise and eye-catching way to communicate ideas.  From the reader's point of view, it's "I-can-scan-this-easily" time.

The 4 January issue of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox lists the top ten intranets for 2011.  After the list, trends and common themes are explored.  Some findings:

• Better tools and greater investment in intranets (even in small companies)
• More and better mobile intranets...a captive, defined audience makes it easier to create highly-functional intranets
• Better management of knowledge on intranets through targeted repositories, encouragement of innovation, easy-to-use commenting tools, user rating systems, and customized content collections
• Task-centered information architecture aids usability
• Search capabilities are of utmost importance
• Page templates and content management systems are key to information organization and consistency

Where else can these ideas be applied?  Certainly for websites more generally.  And, we could all use better tools and greater investment in many aspects of our work. 

The full report is available from the Nielsen Norman Group.

New ventures for Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy

Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, formerly of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker, have launched two new not-to-be-missed resource sites.

INFOdocket brings us industry news, and a whole lot of resources and tools.

FullTextReports...well, it's just what it says!  Reports from think tanks, scholarly organizations, industry analysts, and more.

Each site has an RSS feed and a Twitter feed (@INFOdocket and @fulltextreports), so it's easy to keep up with what's new, and each site is accessible on your mobile device.  How's that for great information service?

 

Minerva Library

You may not have heard of the Minerva Library, and that's likely because it's on a cruise ship.

The Minerva is Swan Hellenic's only ship, and it's quite popular among its many repeat cruisers. 

This article from the Daily Mail describes the library collection as "extensive" and relevant for the ship's varied itineraries.  The library is kept by the Minerva's hotel and entertainment manager.

Dream job, anyone?

The challenges of prison librarianship

Avi Steinberg has written Running the Books, which describes his experiences running a prison library in Suffolk County, New York.  Read more on Amazon.

You know you're curious about it!

Avi was recently interviewed on NPR's "Talk of the Nation."  The NPR site also has an excerpt from the first chapter.

Sounds interesting, and challenging.  Some of the most popular genres in the collection?  Astrology and real estate.

Ethics and critical thinking

As the deadline for SLA 2010 advance registration approaches (fees go up on May 8th!), I hope you are thinking about what sessions and CE courses will inspire your day-to-day work, build upon your existing knowledge, and enhance your resume. I'd like to recommend one course in particular, "Information Ethics and Critical Thinking for Info Pros." We know information ethics are important, but how many of us know how to handle a sticky situation in the workplace?

SLA's Information Ethics Advisory Council has been working on guidelines for professional ethics for SLA members. The need to reach SLA members at the instructional level became apparent to the council's co-chairs, LIS professors and ethics experts Toni Carbo and Tom Froehlich, and a CE course at the upcoming conference was planned to complement SLA's recent work in the ethics arena. 

In this full-day course, offered on Saturday, 12 June, the instructors will introduce the principles of information ethics to participants and foster discussion about ethical challenges and the resolution of issues. Toni and Tom will use lectures, case study examination, and small group discussions to explore information ethics as it relates to privacy, intellectual property, freedom of expression, and the proliferation of newer techologies and the information explosion. 

The knowledge you take away from this course will help make you better-prepared to navigate ethical issues, and set you on a course to thinking critically about the difficult situations we are increasingly facing in the information setting.

A full list of SLA-sponsored CE courses can be found on the Click U Web site. Register for CE courses today, as classes are filling up! Please send any questions to clicku@sla.org.

We look foward to seeing you in New Orleans at SLA 2010!

Are you continuing your education?

Have you thought about your skills and knowledge lately?

SLA 2010 offers many opportunities to improve your skills and expand your knowledge. In addition to the CE courses offered by SLA's divisions, SLA HQ offers additional courses that have a broad appeal to members and non-members alike.

Want to learn more about social networking? Copyright? Coaching? Federated search?  It's all there.

Please review the course offerings and register for one (or more!) today. The full descriptions are available in the online planner, and you can sign up through the conference registration page.

Certificate program courses are also being held during the conference.  Descriptions and registration forms can be found on the Click University Web site.

Questions?  E-mail me at clicku@sla.org.  See you in New Orleans!