Archive for April 2008

Web Worker Daily creates a list of 10 time-savers for Gmail users, here are their abbreviated suggestions:

1. Customize Your Settings
2. Create Filters
3. Use Keyboard Shortcuts
4. Connect Securely
5. Search By Subject Only
6. Show Search Options
7. Use Query Words
8. Use the Hyphen to Eliminate Unwanted Search Results
9. Ferret Out Attachments
10. Use Parentheses to Narrow Down Query Results

A new report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) releases figures for Internet usage on a state-by-state basis which are based on the Census Bureau’s October 2007 Current Population Survey. The report gives total numbers for the US and then also divides households into tables based on characteristics such as rural, urban, and principal city.

via Pew Internet & American Life Project

The ALA has published the 2008 State of America’s Libraries report. Here are their key findings:

• Americans check out over 2 billion items annually from public libraries.
• The average user checks out over 7 books/year.
• The average taxpayer bill for public library services – $31/year.
• Public libraries are engines of economic growth, contributing to local development through programming in early literacy, employment services and small-business development.
• Libraries provide excellent ROI, positively impact the local economy, and contribute to neighborhood quality of life.
• School library media centers help students learn more and score higher on standardized tests, but their funding continues to lag.
• Teens are regular users of public library services.
• Almost all of the nation’s public libraries offer YA programs & over half employ at least one full-time staff equivalent in this area.
• Computer and on-line games have become part of the mix at many public libraries, and some use gaming to attract new patrons.
• Spanish is the top-priority language to which libraries devote non-English language services and programs.
• Most libraries serving non-English speakers are in communities with fewer than 100,000 residents.
• Ebooks continued to emerge as a regular feature of libraries of all types.
• Library supporters won an important victory in 2007 when the Environmental Protection Agency was ordered to re-open many of the libraries it had closed in the past year.
• College and research libraries continue to find innovative new ways to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the academy.
• Libraries and librarians of all stripes continue to stand up for the First Amendment rights of all Americans, responding in public discourse and in court to unconstitutional snooping and aspiring book-banners. The right to read — freely and in private — remains a core value of the profession.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

The latest issue of Educause Review has an article by Peter Brantley entitled Architectures for Collaboration: Roles and Expectations for Digital Libraries in which he discusses the need for change within today’s libraries. In the article he asserts a set of “library mantras” which he feels are key to this change, including:

• Libraries Must Be Available Everywhere.
• Libraries Must Be Designed to Get Better through Use.
• Libraries Must Be Portable.
• Libraries Must Know Where They Are.
• Libraries Must Tell Stories.
• Libraries Must Help People Learn.
• Libraries Must Be Tools of Change.
• Libraries Must Offer Paths for Exploration.
• Libraries Must Help Forge Memory.
• Libraries Must Speak for People.
• Libraries Must Study the Art of War.

“The success of libraries is not to be counted by the number of books, either digital or paper, held by libraries or the number of pretty pictures that libraries can put online. Libraries are successful to the extent that they can bridge communities and can leverage the diversity of the quest, the research, and the discovery. Libraries are successful when they offer new services and when they help others discover services provided by others. By building bridges among these various sectors, libraries will be able to define themselves in the next generation. They will become the architects of collaboration.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb gives us Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader. He has some very interesting suggestions including using an RSS filter such as AideRSS to sort out and subscribe to only the most popular posts in each feed to save yourself time. Here are his 7 tips:

1. Oversubscribe
2. Try a River of News View
3. Use Multiple Services
4. Try Out a Desktop Reader
5. Tag Items to Share
6. Learn about OPML
7. Try Out Additional Services

Are you thinking about deleting your account on Facebook? Apparently, it may be more difficult than you think. The Facebook group How to permanently delete your facebook account which offers advice and a discussion board has over 15,000 members. Here are some recent writings on the topic:

• Hey, Facebook, just let go of me – The Times Online
• Quitting Facebook Gets Easier – The New York Times
• Is Facebook Your “Permanent Record?” – ReadWriteWeb
• How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free – The New York Times
• After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser – The New York Times
• Delete My Bleeping Account, Facebook! – The Daily Kos Blog

The Best of the Web directory has compiled a list of fifteen free programs available for Mac users to download, many of which look very useful such as the backup utility Carbon Copy Cloner, TextWrangler which will check any type of code you’re writing, and Adium’s IM client. Here’s the full list:

1. Quicksilver
2. Adium
3. Flip4Mac WMV Player (Quicktime Codec)
4. TextWrangler
5. Gimp
6. Firefox
7. Azureus
8. StuffIt Expander
9. iSquint
10. Carbon Copy Cloner
11. GeekTool
12. MenuMeters
13. Burn
14. Neo Office
15. VLC

Read Write Web’s Sarah Perez lets us know about 5 Web applications for locating people to follow on Twitter.

1. Twubble
2. Twitter Local
3. TwitterWho
4. Twits Like Me
5. TwitDir

Web Worker Daily has 7 tips for us to increase our Firefox efficiency:

1. Bring Back That Tab
2. Bring Back That Site
3. Delete Bookmarks
4. Customize Your Toolbars
5. Customize Your Tab Handling
6. Disable Password Manager–if You Want!
7. Get More from Your Mouse

The Forrester analysts at Groundswell discuss the top reasons that people take part in social activity online. These motivations are important to keep in mind when designing your own online social environment. Here are their top motives:

• Keeping up friendships
• Making new friends
• Succumbing to social pressure from existing friends
• Paying it forward
• The altruistic impulse
• The prurient impulse
• The creative impulse
• The validation impulse
• The affinity impulse

This year’s conference was jam-packed with informative and entertaining sessions. Here are a few links to presentation slides, but be sure and keep an eye on Slideshare for more:

Libraries Solve Problems (Keynote) – Lee Rainie

Online Outreach for Libraries: Successful Digital Marketing – Sarah Houghton-Jan

Transparency, Planning & Change: See-Through Libraries – Michael Stephens and Michael Casey

Pecha Kucha 2.0 Podcasting Edition – Greg Schwartz

Technology Training for Library Staff: Creativity Works! – Sarah Houghton-Jan

Podcasting & Videocasting Bootcamp – David Lee King and David Free

Innovation Starts with “I” – Helene Blowers and Tony Tallent

From Avatars to Advocacy: Innovation through Un-marketing – Helene Blowers and Michael Porter

Harnessing New Data Visualization Tools – Darlene Fichter

Mashups for Non-Techies: Yahoo! Pipes – Jody Fagan

and the InfoTubey award winners

| View | Upload your own

Today at the Computers in Libraries 2008 conference, I presented on the open source content management system Drupal and how it’s being used by libraries and librarians. For those of you who weren’t able to make the conference but are still interested, I’ve created a Slidecast of my talk which is a combination of my PowerPoint presentation and an audio track. You can also just download the presentation and check out the speaker notes if you’d rather.

According to ReadWrite Web, Penguin Books is using new social media tools to distribute six of its titles in a new We Tell Stories campaign. The British publisher is using a LiveJournal blog, Twitter, and Google Maps to post its stories in a serialized format over a weeklong period for each story.

Lifehacker creates a list of the top five best instant messaging tools based on a user poll of over 550 comments. Here are the 5 most voted-for applications:

1. Digsby (Windows)
2. Pidgin (Windows/Linux)
3. Meebo (Web)
4. Adium (Mac OS X)
5. Trillian (Windows)

Honorable mention: Miranda IM

Anyone doing the conference circuit this spring will want to check out the C|Net News story How to survive the next-gen confab, which discusses the new interactive audience which has been given a voice at these events through such tools as Twitter, IM, and blogs.

“If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, consider this: Today, there are so many ways to communicate that even in a conference ballroom where there’s no Wi-Fi, many audience members likely have smartphones they can use to Twitter their impressions of whoever is speaking. Add working Wi-Fi and you’ve got a full-throated echo chamber of people who aren’t at all shy about making every last thought public.”