Information Center Connections

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!

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.

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?

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?

 

Social media and you

I've been catching up on my professional reading, and I picked up the July 2009 FUMSI Report on social media in the enterprise.  The issue includes the results of a survey on how social media is used in organizations, integration of social media with business processes, and the culture surrounding social media in the workplace.

Respondents indicated that internal blogs were the most popular "official" social application (external blogs were rated second most popular).  However, LinkedIn proved the most-used tool when both "official" and "unofficial" uses are included.  Least popular overall?  MySpace and Second Life...not a surprise. 

What is distressing are the results related to social media integration.  Overall satisfaction with how social media is at work in the organization was rated an average of 1.91 out of 4.00.  That's pretty low.  Seems that, in general, some staff "get" it (2.24 out of 4.00), but the marks for senior management are lower (2.07 out of 4.00).  And 53% of respondents indicated that the atmosphere surrounding social media is "very restrictive" or "somewhat restrictive."  And respondents are frustrated.

Here at SLA we use blogs regularly to communicate with members (and non-members) and have also incorporated Twitter (me, too), Facebook, and LinkedIn (here and here) in our arsenal of devices.

How are social media (blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) taking off in your organization?  Do you feel free to use these tools?  Are you encouraged to use them?  Most importantly, have strategies been developed to maximize their power? 

Value and costs, value and costs

And, in this installment of "how information professionals provide value," here's a new eBook from Dow Jones that offers concrete suggestions for creating valuable time- and money-saving services for your clients.

Pay Now or Pay Later: Exposing the Hidden Cost of "Free" Information, which I found through a tweet from contributor Mary Ellen Bates (@mebs), is a roadmap for information center planning. In addition to some helpful statistics, there are tips for reputation management, data presentation, and management of projects and information.

What a great way to start the post-summer strategizing.

Worth a click

People still use instant messaging, right? Check out Meebo, which is IM central for all your accounts.

Seesmic is a web-based alternative to TweetDeck (desktop and iPhone versions also available) that allows you to view both Twitter feeds and Facebook updates in one place...kind of a like a command center.

Resources on writing from Purdue University.  OWL, the Online Writing Lab.

Portals and KM, an intelligent blog from Bill Ives, covers several topics of interest to members...knowledge management, 2.0 (enterprise and Web), and blogs.

That Twitter thing

I've avoided it for long enough.  A post about Twitter.

Why have I been avoiding it? 

Well, in the beginning, it was lack of knowledge.  I had an account (@triviachick), had made a post or two, but just didn't get it.  What's retweeting, again?  How is this good for business? 

In the middle, it was realizing that, although I was tweeting (that's the verb form of Twitter), there was much more to learn.  Not only had an account been set up for the SLA 2009 conference (@sla2009, which is still active, by the way), but I created one for SLA HQ (@slahq) for more general posts.  (@sla was taken...I didn't move fast enough!)  Articles and e-mails about Twitter were everywhere (that seemed to happen overnight, and the activity only grew), but was I ready to talk intelligently about Twitter and tweeting and how to do this, that, and the other thing?  Nope...but I collected all those e-mails and articles and put them in a safe place (that is, I shoved them in an e-mail folder).

Today, 116 followers, 191 updates, one staff training, and 117 items in that e-mail folder later, I came to the conclusion that if I don't write this post NOW, it'll never get written.

So, here's the Twitter post.  Rather, *a* Twitter post, since I'll be writing about it periodically...way (way) too much information to share in one post at this point.  And, how could I not start today when I saw this stat, from Nielsen, on Mashable (@mashable):  Twitter has grown 1,928% in one year. 

Whoa.  Are you a part of that?

So, let's begin...

Question:  What is Twitter? (no sense in making assumptions and leaving people behind)

Answer:  Twitter is an easy-to-use online service through which you share short messages with those who "follow" you.  You, in turn, follow them (possibly) and others.  There is a 140-character limit on the messages...which is more than you think, but is sometimes not quite enough.

Question:  Why would I want to tweet (that is, use Twitter)?  What's in it for me, or my library, or my business?

Answer:  People use Twitter for many reasons, from personal to corporate.  You can share what you're doing in a moment, put out a call for assistance or opinions or information, promote a product or service, spread news (yours or someone else's).  It's (another) way to connect with clients/patrons/enter-audience-type-here.  From the other side, it's a way to receive information (news, questions, tips) from those you want to receive it from.

Question:  No, really, why would I use it?  How do I use it?

Answer: Take a look:

LISNews Company introduces new DVD to protect data 1,000+ yrs http://bit.ly/19c26k  [and here it is on Twitter]

resourceshelf Springer Launches Innovative Publisher-Based Image Collection http://tr.im/sGD6  [Twitter version]

SLAAcad Call for editorial board members! http://bit.ly/11nIgo  [Twitter version]

tywebb75 Adding Shirky's "Here comes everybody" to the lo-o-ng list of books I want to read. Think his ideas may backup own thoughts re ass'n future  [Twitter version]

Jill_HW Been reorganizing my RSS feeds in Bloglines. Hope this helps me archieve "reader zero" on a more regular basis.  [Twitter version]

triviachick Just got an extension for my Information Outlook column. The blog post is taking longer than I want it to...but it must be done.  [Twitter version]

What else you'll find:  job postings, links to photographs and research reports, local traffic updates, and a heck of a lot of U.S. government information.

Does it make more sense now?  Is that enough to get you started?  If so, visit Twitter to look around, sign up.  Updates are public (unless they are made private by account holders), so exploring doesn't involve setting an account up.  Not sure where to start?  Take a look at the list of tweets above, my followers and following lists (at @triviachick) and those of your tweeting colleagues.  There's also a directory of SLA Twitterers, both individuals and units, in SLA's wiki space.  Search for topics and read some posts.  Some of it is serendipity.

My next Twitter post will have some information on the mechanics of posting, including some helpful commands and other tips.  Plus, tools (including search) and even more tips.  In the meantime, a fairly comprehensive Twitter resource you may want to look at is Mashable's Twitter Guide Book...lots of answers there.

Worth a click

If you aren't wholly satisfied with your Twitter experience, you might need a tool or two to make your life complete.  Take a look at the Ultimate List of Twitter Tools from the Social Media Guide.

Fifty Best Blogs for Law Librarians.  You be the judge.

What is Web 3.0 exactly?  Here are a few explanations.

GovFresh is a mega-feed of U.S. government updates from various 2.0 tools.

Stuff...need some?  Need to get rid of some?  Try takemeimfree.com or Freecycle.