LibrarianInBlack

Techtorials

Here's another technology tutorial website for your toolkit, either for staff or user training.  We all need to know computer stuff, right?  Right!

Techtorials offers video tutorials for three applications: Adobe Photoshop, Irfanview, and 7-Zip.  It's not being updated frequently (last video was uploaded 7 months ago), but what is already there is quite useful--particularly the Photoshop tutorials.  Take a look! 

I think it would be lovely if libraries who have developed technology tutorials could contribute what they've made to this and other collaborative wiki-style tutorial sites.  There are many, and sharing what we have is what it's all about.  While I'm at it, I'll put in a plug for the Library Instruction Wiki, another place that libraries should be sharing any training materials created in-house (Word documents, Powerpoints, wikis, blogs, videos, screencasts, podcasts, anything). 

We reinvent the wheel so much.  We don't need to.  We just need to convince administrators to let us post things we've created, for the betterment of libraries and users everywhere.  Good goal, right?  But you'd be surprised how often administrators say that those materials cannot be shared because they belong to the library/city/county/university/school and are the property of its funders/taxpayers, not the "everybody" of the Web.  Oy, the politics make my head hurt.

(Techtorials was found many months ago on eContent (can you tell I'm wading through my backlog of "stuff to blog"?))

library catalogs and library events: the SOPAC dream made reality

The InfoBlog has a nice concise post by Paul Signorelli about social library catalogs (SOPACs): Web 2.0 Best Practices: When Author Events Lead to Library Collections.  He links to a few of the libraries doing amazing things with their catalogs and uses the example of the connections between library events and the catalog to explain the concept.  If you're new to the idea of socializing (perhaps that isn't the right word) your library catalog, or you know people who are, then this article is a good introduction to the idea.

51 RSS button images

If you want to snazzify your site through RSS buttons with some flair, check out these 51 RSS Buttons, courtesy of Bloggers Journey.  Some of the images are huge, so the page takes a while to load.  Just take a bathroom break, and you'll come back to a great selection of RSS buttons, including some non-orange buttons.  Imagine that!

found via A Feed is Born

Social networking issue of JCMC

For some excellent information about social networking, check out the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication special theme issue on "Social Network Sites."  The issue was edited by danah boyd (who you may know from her blog, apophenia) and Nicole Ellison.   There are several articles, including:

• "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship" by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
• "Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube" by Patricia Lange
• "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites" by Eszter Hargittai

I particularly found the Hargittai article useful in a library setting--who is using these sites?  why?  who isn't using them?  why?  All good questions for a library to ask of its community when engaging in the dedication of resources to social networking presences.  And it's about more than just Facebook and MySpace--there are hundreds if not thousands of very popular specialized social networks based on age, ethnicity, religion, interests, politics, and a lot more.  As with any project, know your community's needs before diving in.

Sarah Utter, Queen Bee, and BuyOlympia

You may own a Sarah Utter shirt already--the "reading is sexy" line went over like gangbusters with library folk.  I bought one even though it was not available in black.  That should tell you something  about how much I liked the shirt!  :)  She has a cute new design now--a low key black Guybrarian shirt, and in organic cotton too (black organic cotton is hard to come by--but now that it's around, how 'bout a "reading is sexy" black girlie shirt?  Pretty please?).  You can also find a lot of her other neat designs, like the "Future Librarian" stuff, at BuyOlympia, one of my favorite online stores for friend-gift-shopping.  And, er, for self-gift-shopping.  I just bought two Queen Bee items--beautiful vinyl (yay vegan!) bags and wallets.  So, try Sarah Utter, try Queen Bee, and remember BuyOlympia for library-gift-giving.  I'm sure you'll find fun stuff here for everybody--I do!  ***AND THERE JUST HAPPENS TO BEFREE SHIPPING THIS WEEKEND (NOV.30-DEC.2)!!!!***

vintage toy encyclopedia

Collectors, enthusiasts, and the merely curious will delight in ToyNfo.com, a vintage toy encyclopedia like none I've seen before.  It covers dolls, action figures, toys, and other toy-themed collectibles.  Not everything is covered, but many "old toy" questions that I remember getting at the reference desk would have been answered by this site.  Their definition of "vintage" is also a little curious.  Either that or I'm getting old.  Toys from my childhood, and even teenager years, are included in the site (Pee Wee Herman fans rejoice).  Incidentally, the same site owners have a vintage ticket stub encyclopedia online too.

Math worksheet site

Another math resources site to add to your resources list: the Math Worksheet Site.  This one has worksheets galore, all customizable.  A true treasure trove of free loveliness that I found a while back through the Internet Scout Project Report.

Amazon Kindle

Many people have written to me to ask what I think about Amazon’s new eBook reader, the Kindle.  Much has been written about it in the popular and technology news media—in fact, Newsweek did a substantial feature article on the metamorphosis of the written word using the Kindle as a jumping off point for the story.  If you are generally interested in why Amazon has released the Kindle, how it works precisely, its features, and its flaws—then I suggest you read one of those many articles.  Without having actually seen or touched a Kindle, I can’t comment on its usability or touchability.  But, from everything I have read, there are a few things that stand out in my mind:

 

• The device is small—the size of a medium-sized paperback—and relatively lightweight.  I think that its touchability, or sensation, will have a lot to do with its success or failure.
• The ability to buy eBooks directly from the device—eliminating the need to download the book to a “real” computer, then transfer it to the device—makes this device stronger than any other eBook reader to date.  Amazon is following the sacred library rule to save the time of the reader.
• The “previous” and “next” page buttons are located on the left of the device and are quite huge.  Some reviewers state that this makes it difficult to pick up the device initially without accidentally moving forward or backward.
• The use of eInk in the device’s display creates a high quality screen, with good resolution, but still not anything approximating the clarity of a quality printed page.
• The ability to view documents sent to your special “Amazon” email address is wonderful—turning it into a document reader as well as a true eBook reader.
• The ability to go online to do web searches, follow links, and move from book to other tasks makes the device more flexible—and since when reading people often have questions best answered online, the ability to do so from the same device is a definite plus.

I will be interested to see how sales do.  At nearly $400 a pop this is not a casual purchase and, at least initially, I don’t expect them to be flying off of the shelves.  Early adopters will latch on to the device, iron some things out, and who knows?  In a few years we might get a full color, half-as-expensive version!  I wish Amazon luck with this endeavor.

CLA president blogging

The new President of the California Library Association, Monique le Conge, plans to regularly blog on the CLA blog.  Her first entry is up now, asking for ideas of how the organization can attract more members.  If you have ideas, please share them!

Why Hawaii makes me hate the computer

Limahuli Gardens
Originally uploaded by Librarian In Black

I've been enjoying my vacation here in Kauai, after my speaking at the Hawaii Library Association's annual conference, and still have a week left of rest before starting my new job. As you can see, I haven't been blogging, but when it's a toss up between sitting inside with a laptop and going outside to see things like the beautiful Limahuli Gardens, as pictured here, you can guess the result.

dumpr: a source of photo fun

Looking for more fun things to do with your photos?  Check out dumpr, where you can turn your photos into customized Rubik's cubes, jigsaw puzzles, legoize photos, age them, and a lot more.  Below is an image I created with the Museumr using the delete key image from my earlier post.  You can pick any image and choose from several museum scenes--making your image automatically famous!  Some fun library projects with images can be had here for certain! 

Green products and information search engine

Green is big.  And Greener is a search engine to use to find all things green.  I have found the search engine runs really quickly, which perhaps comes from the fact that they are searching "over 9 million pages and 50 million links," and not aiming for the entire web like general search engines.  Even so, they do seem really fast...always a plus.  I have found that the search results are easy to navigate, ad-free, and relevant.  Here are the results for a search for wind power.  This is definitely a resource I will recommend to library staff and users.

originally seen on eHub

Delete key eraser

On a totally non-serious note, if you are looking for gifts for the geeks in your life, consider a beautiful Delete Key eraser.  There are a few different versions out there.  There is one for $1 from Broadway Paper (the one pictured to the left) and one for $2.50 from Baron Bob.  There is a larger palm-sized version from an art website that has been marked as "available soon" for a long while - but it's big, so perhaps it is worth waiting for.

HLA 2007: World Cafes and Round Tables

There were two "World Cafes" held at HLA this year.  These consisted of 4-6 people sitting at a table, discussing a provided question, the responses being recorded, then moving on to another group/table to discuss the same or other questions.  Some of the questions asked were what libraries should stop doing, who libraries' competitors are, what makes libraries sustainable for the future, etc.  Similar approaches are often used in big groups to harvest the collective intelligence and to try to get some solutions to given problems.  The discussions that happened at HLA were most interesting, and show how vastly different library experiences are based on the type, size, and culture of each individual library. 

The speakers also presented some sessions as round tables, which pretty much functioned in the same way - a group of 8-15 people talking about a given subject for 45 minutes.    My round table on technology training was enlightening, and as various attendees voiced their concerns or problems at their libraries, others chimed in with potential solutions or approaches.  Very good use of the hive mind :)  I'd be interested to see larger conferences - like ALA or even larger state conferences like California's - take on something like this and approach the entire attendee list's worth of intelligence to the organization's, and its members', issues.

HLA 2007: Sarah's presentation: "Online Outreach and Marketing"

HLA2007: Online Outreach and Marketing
Presenter:  Sarah Houghton-Jan (me!)

You can see a copy of my presentation as a PDF.  Hopefully the HLA attendees found it helpful, and hopefully perhaps a few others of you will too.  It is very similar to the presentation Aaron Schmidt and I gave at Internet Librarian, so if you read/saw that one, this will be rather repetitive for you.  And if not, it's all new, and that is wonderful!

HLA 2007: Sarah's presentation: "Technology Training Tips"

HLA 2007: Technology Training Tips
Presenter: Sarah Houghton-Jan (me!)

This was a round table, so I didn't have a presentation as such.  I did however create a list of tech training online tutorials, glossaries, and live webcast resources (available here as a Word document).  This list is primarily useful for library staff, but most of the resources could be used for training the public as well.  If this is an interest of yours, I recommend the recent book The Accidental Technology Trainer by Stephanie Gerding.  Excellent treatment of the subject with a lot more resources than I list here.

HLA 2007: Sarah's presentation: "Building a Thriving eBranch"

HLA 2007: Building a Thriving eBranch
Presenter: Sarah Houghton-Jan (me!)

This was a fun presentation to give, and despite the fact that it started at 8:15 pm (yes, pm), there was quite a large audience.  I thank everyone who came.  Here is a link to my presentation as a PDF.  Enjoy!

HLA 2007: Michael Stephens's Keynote

I'm not going to blog all of the sessions I attend at HLA, as many are discussion-based roundtables - much less blog-able.  But I will offer what I can!

HLA 2007: Keynote: Ten Technologies: Ideas to Improve Library Productivity
Presenter: Michael Stpehens

Michael Stephens's half-hour keynote kicked off the conference.  The presentation was given in an open-air "ballroom," with a lawn behind us with palm trees, monkeypod trees, birds, and flowers.  The weather was warm, the breeze was cool, and the participants seemed excited to get the conferencec started in this manner.  Michael's presentation is now posted on his website, tametheweb.com. 

Michael started by talking about OCLC's Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.  He noted a few statistics - that 96% of people have used a library at least once.  51% have used instant messaging.  And 30% have never even heard of online databases.  There are trends toward self-service information finding and seamless information discovery - no need for multiple stops.  Only 1% of survey respondents start at the library's website for finding information.  Most people start with search engines.  Libraries are thought of as book stockpiles.  Reasons people listed for why they didn't use the library's website were that they didn't know the library's website existed, couldn't find the website, or other websites had better information.

If the library's website is out of date, you can use a blog for your website, or on your website to pull in new information and dynamic content.  The SJCPL Blog, libraryforlife.org, has 30 people contributing to it.  He listed other blog examples, including the waterloo Public Library.  If staff information isn't flowing to those who need it, create a staff blog as a way to communicate important information to all staff.  The Regent campus Library staff blog was listed as an example - and Michael noted that everyone should be allowed to post to the staff blog. 

Use Flickr to host images and more.  He listed a few examples: the Gwinnett County Public Library, the Lackman Library virtual tour, University of Michigan Library's banned books photo display, Fort Wayne Public Library.  He also emphasized that if you upgrade to the paid account, you can list quite a bit of information on your Flickr profile - hours, contact information, mission statement, link to the library website, etc.  He noted the ever-popular fd's flickr toys - the ability to make photo walls, librarian trading cards, and a lot more.

Michael talked about using RSS to keep up...using Bloglines to aggregate all of his information in one place.  He mentioned a few aggregator options including NetVibes and Google Reader.  He also suggested using NetVibes to create a staff portal, with one tab for each staff member.

Michael touched on wikis as a way to disseminate staff information.  He cited a few examples including the SJCPL Playground Wiki with information on customer service and Library 2.0 information, and the Allen County Public Library's phone system wiki, with lots of information and training materials.  The SJCPL wiki was created by circulation staff, and they started using it as a way to note every time they said no to patrons and then met monthly to figure out how to turn those nos into yeses whenever possible.

His 5 ideas are to:

1. Manager Projects Well: read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen adn "Death by Meeting" by Patrick M. Lencioni.  He suggests having short timelines and discovering strategies for having effective meetings.  He suggested BusinessWeek Online's article "How to Run a Meeting Like Google." 
2. Learning 2.0: look at the proram created by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County.
3. Form an Emerging Tech Group: start a blog for the group to inform the entire library staff of the group's activities
4. Adopt a 2.0 Philosophy: Throw out the culture of perfect.  Instead, discover, play, and explore. 
5. Create a Culture of Trust: Trust our users and trust each other.  Trust staff to post to the library's website.  Trust the public to leave blog comments.

Michael closed with his three statements of library philosophy: Learn to Learn.  Adapt to Change.  Scan the Horizon.

Thank you Michael for a fabulous presentation!

Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database

A popular genre in libraries is science fiction.  Another is fantasy.  Roll both into one with a meticulous database-keeper, and you have an information rich resource with over 76,000 items!  The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database, created by Hal W. Hall, describes itself as:

"...an on-line, searchable compilation and extension of Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index 1878-1985, Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index 1985-1991, and Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index 1992-1995, including material located since publication of the last printed volume."

The database covers horror as well as science fiction and fantasy.  The database includes information about fiction in these genres, including fan fiction, as well as entries with reviews, awards, and a lot more.  It is predominantly English in nature, though some other languages make an impressive showing as well.  Another fabulous resource to add to your bookmarks!

finding more uses for Flickr

If you're looking for some new things to do with your Flickr account, take a look at this list of 283 Flickr mashups from Programmable Web.  There were a lot more options for creating photo slideshows and badges on your website than I had imagined, like this one: the Flickr Album Maker.  What a great place to find some new ways to use those precious, beautiful, full-of-life images to promote the library and bring your community together!

found via Phil Bradley's Weblog

if you don't get enough of work at work...

...then ask U.S. broadcasters to import the Australian comedy The Librarians.  In the meantime, enjoy their snarky website.  You can view full episodes online, see video clips of all sorts of parts of the show, read about your favorite librarians, and more.  Enjoy!

Here in Kauai

I am speaking Saturday and Sunday at the Hawaii Library Association's annual conference, along with a number of other speakers including Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine.  We landed here in Kauai last night, headed over to the conference hotel--the Grand Hyatt Kauai--and are enjoying the resort immensely.  It's a bit surreal, a bit Disneyworld-ish.  I'll put photos up soon, but this link should take you to the hotel's own photos.  We're enjoying beautiful plant life, sea breezes, hot days, feral chickens (no, I'm not kidding), macaws and cockatoos, and $28 breakfasts (bwah).  Conference starts tomorrow, and I am thrilled!  I will post my presentations/materials here after the presentation occurs.  Until then, I'm off to sleep with the lanai doors open, ocean sounds lulling me to sleep.

Get your library into Facebook!

Getting your library into Facebook, and having an effective profile there, has never been easier.  Facebook opened up business and institutional profiles.  You can put all sorts of information in to your profile, interact with the public on your comments "wall," and people can become your library's fans--letting your library's information feed into the feed they see of their friends and family's activities.  For a couple of examples of how libraries have done this well, see the Facebook profiles of the Hennepin County Library and the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County.

Create an RSS feed when there isn't one

There are a lot of pages on the web without RSS feeds.  And some of us want RSS feeds for them so we don't have to keep traveling back to the site to check for updates.  Enter Page2RSS.  This service will create an RSS feed for any page you choose.  They offer a browser button that will create feeds for whatever page you're viewing at present.  To get the button, just drag the link on their website up into your browser's toolbar (seems to work in both IE and Firefox).  How lovely!  I have used this for some time now and quite successfully added several new feeds to my list of hundreds.  I have absolutely no complaints.

Read This To Me service

A local librarian recently emailed me with the following resource.  Read This To Me is a service for people with no or low vision.  If blind or low-vision people have something that they cannot read (e.g. printed mail, letter from the grandkids) they simply fax the item to a toll-free number.  A volunteer will call the person back and read the text back to them.  It is a free service, and there is no real statement about how long it will take volunteers to call back.  However, for no and low vision users, this seems like it would be a welcome service.  Learn more at ReadThisToMe.org.  Volunteer sign-ups are being taken online as well.

More Fun Image Generators

From time to time I link to some of the fun image generators I've found recently.  All of the following were found through the Generator Blog. 

• Bob Dylan Message Generator
• Web 2.0 Application Generator
• Rocket Ship Generator
• Street Sign Generator

Libraries can use these to create cute images for materials displays, images for the library's website, print advertisements, you name it.  Image generators are a seriously underutilized freebie in the library world :)

Genealogy Agent

Tara Calishain over at ResearchBuzz recently linked to a useful genealogy resource you may want to point your patrons to: Genealogy Agent.  After free registration, you can monitor a number of different genealogy sites for the names of relatives, including nicknames.  Email reports will be sent to you once new data comes in.  Nice!

Where To Get Free And Legal Music Online

Always full of useful and not-totally-work-related information, Lifehack.org recently linked to a website that lists  free and also copyright-safe/legal online music: The Complete Guide to Free Music Online.  Take a look at the list and you will find yourself adding to your online music library, no matter what kind of music you like.  This may also be a good list to publicize to library users, letting them know that there are lovely places online to get free music.

Row of brain power

  Row of brain power   

I just uploaded my photos from Internet Librarian to Flickr.  I'm a bit slow, and a lot of them turned out fuzzy due to the poor lighting in the conference rooms (especially when we all had to dim the lights to near darkness so that the projector's display would actually be visible).  Nevertheless, here they are, including this shot of (from near to far) David Lee King, Erik Boekesteijn, Jaap van de Geer, and Geert van den Boogaard.  The last three gents were here from the Netherlands and created quite a stir with their library tour project.

bad IT practices

A couple of weeks ago David Lee King linked to an excellent article on how IT really works (read: those things that happen in IT that even IT people don't really think about).   The full article, "Sanity check: 10 dirty little secrets you should know about working in IT," is available on TechRepublic.   Think of them as things that IT people wish they had been told before they got into IT, or took a particular job. 

My favorite is #4: "You’ll spend far more time babysitting old technologies than implementing new ones."  Oh yes...definitely  true.  Read the whole list for yourself to  do some self-reflection if you are IT, or to gain some insight into what goes on in IT that might be responsible for making them the wee bit cranky that they (we) tend to be.

Dealing with Information Overload

Ellyssa Kroski, who I got the chance to meet at the Internet Librarian Conference, has created another set of useful resources on dealing with information overload.  She links to several articles and guides that may help you with whatever overload or organizational issue you are encountering.  My favorite is "Key to Organization: The Habit of Now."  This may be something you want to pass on to anyone in your life who is disorganized or who has, say, piles of papers and random stuff lying everywhere and whose digital files fare no better.

Digitized children's materials

The Library of Congress has digitized a collection of 50 traditional children's titles for their Children's Literature Collection.  These are mostly older titles (and I do mean older), and they include wonderful illustrations, like in Denslow's Mother Goose.  Everything is in PDF, so enjoy!

found some time ago on ResourceShelf

Useful Health Resource: My Family Health Portrait

The U.S. Surgeon General has put out a site entitled My Family Health Portrait.  The site allows users to enter their own and their families' medical data, and then use that tool and reporting feature when speaking with doctors.  You can save the information to disk, or email it to someone too!  This is a heck of a lot better than my method, which is every time I have to fill out a family medical history section I am wracking my brain trying to remember everything!  Definitely a useful tool to highlight to the public.

Some tools for creating free and easy web pages

If your library is looking for some easy web page hosting and creation tools, and free blogs aren't meeting your needs, check out this post from Aaron Schmidt: quick and dirty webpage creation.  These tools could also be used by committees needing to post information for their group work, as Aaron points out.  Great list!  As long as your library doesn't have a problem with content being hosted on other providers' servers, which is indeed the case in some libraries, then these sites can get around IT department slowness in offering these productivity tools to the library staff "officially."

Medical and scientific web references preserved with WebCite

WebCite is an archiving system for web references that can be used by authors, publishers, or editors to preserve content for the long-term.  From the tool's self-description:

A WebCite® reference is an archived webcitation, and rather than linking to the live website (which can and probably will disappear in the future), authors of scholarly works will link to the archived WebCite® copy on webcitation.org.

Many organizations, including BioMed Central, are starting to use WebCite in order to start preserving content as soon as possible (a la Internet Archive).  I would love to see library science publications starting to take advantage of this tool, or to create another like it.  I often find broken links in the library literature--and I'm talking old Library Journal articles, old Information Today publications.  It is the nature of the web.   But when the literature of our profession is concerned, we can overcome that nature and preserve a snapshot in time of the resources involved.

35+ Ways to Find and Plan Events Online

The always-useful Mashable has a list of over 35 places to go to either plan or find online events.  This means the following for libraries: Any site that lists events online is a place that your library should be exploring as an outlet to list your own events.  I've had my own, smaller list going of places for libraries to list their events online - but this list has added a few places for me too.  Take a look!

Terrafly: more local info in one place than you can shake a stick at

One of the sites that my good friend Gary Price has been trying to get me to pay more attention to for ages is Terrafly.  I have it bookmarked, I use it from time to time, but since he re-highlighted this site during his Best of ResourceShelf 2007 presentation at Internet Librarian earlier this week, I thought it might be a good time to highlight it here too. 
Terrafly is a website that collects data from dozens of sources related to places.  Below is a partial (yes, partial) list of the data that you can get on any given city, address, or other geographic location through Terrafly.  Think of it as a META-local search.

• Information on by the location's population, square mileage, homes, and water percentage by the city, county, zip code, congressional district, census tract, block, and more
• Fly over maps for the area, down to the block level
• Streets nearby, distance in feet
• Nearby hotels, restaurants, and other businesses
• Nearby real estate listings
• Nearby airports
• Nearby places of interest and travel destinations
• Nearby banks, hospitals
• Nearby entertainment, parking, and shopping options
• Public and private schools, as well as colleges
• Detailed census data
• Weather and fire information
• Aerial and satellite imagery

If you want to see for yourself, click here to see a search for the address of my local library.

My Interview on Adjunct Advice

I recently completed an interview with Gregory Zobel, from the College of the Redwoods (north of me), for posting on the Adjunct Advice website.  You can view the interview here, but bear in mind you need to click on "continue" to see the full thing (no, you won't have to pay or subscribe or sign up or anything--just click).  Since I haven't been posting a whole lot lately, the least I can do is point you toward some more "Sarah-speak."