Archive for April 2009

Sean P Aune at SitePoint rounds up 30+ Places To Find Creative Commons Media for those seeking audio, video, images, and text files that can be re-used free of charge under a CC license.

DesignReviver gathers links to 13 Tutorials & Resources for a Perfect Twitter Background including:

• How to brand yourself with a Twitter background
• How to make a Twitter background picture
• Create a Twitter background using PowerPoint (I used this one to create my Twitter background, it was very easy to follow).
• Create a Twitter background with Photoshop

Brett Borders at Social Media Rockstar provides a guide to How to Build a Strong Reputation With Comments. This helpful post points out appropriate tools for making commenting easier and discusses how to strategize about commenting.

• The Reciprocal Nature of Comments
• Tools for Efficient Commenting
• Building an Effective Comment Strategy
• Take the “100 Comment Challenge”

David Spark, veteran tech journalist and founder of Spark Media Solutions, writes for Mashable about ways to effectively grow your online network by conveying 12 Inspiring Stories of Successful Social Networkers. The article offers some valuable tips as well as anecdotes for aspiring super networker:

• Let art become life
• Seed your network
• Create super users
• Offer advice
• Build your network before you launch your business
• Parlay your hobby into a business opportunity
• Selective networking
• Give something away that’s customized for the user
• Personally greet new members
• Offer to give something away on YOUR birthday

I was thinking that Mashable’s latest post by Sharlyn Lauby titled “Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?” could easily be applied to libraries. Since many libraries have begun adopting social media tools, it stands to reason that some may be considering developing such a policy. The article covers the Five W’s to creating a social media policy:

1. WHY have such a policy?
2. WHAT can social media do for my organization?
3. WHO should the policy cover?
4. WHERE should you let employees know about this policy?
5. WHEN is the right time to implement a policy?

I’d be really interested to hear what else you might add to a library-specific Social Media policy – please add your suggestions in the comments!

If you still aren’t sure about what BitTorrent is (peer-to-peer file sharing technology), and how to get started using it, there is now a free 28-page illustrated e-book from MakeUseOf.com on the topic. The book is available for free download as a pdf.

Lee Odden at the Online Marketing Blog posts about 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips gathered from expert in-house social media marketers from Dell, Comcast, HP, Intel and more. The article includes advice and insight from 25 contributors including:

• Charlene Li – Founder of The Altimeter Group and best selling author, ”Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies”.
• Chris Brogan – President of New Marketing Labs
• Nick Ayres – Interactive Marketing Manager, The Home Depot
• Frank Eliason – Director of Digital Care, Comcast
• Richard Binhammer – Senior Manager, Dell

Brian Clark at Copyblogger puts together a guide to Four Copywriting Techniques for Engaging Podcasts and Audio Presentations. This useful article discusses how to structure an audio presentation using techniques such as attention, empathy, solution, and action as well as how to present content in a compelling well through the following four techniques:

1. Stories and Anecdotes
2. Metaphors, Similes and Analogies
3. Mirroring
4. Mind’s Eye Scenarios

A new search application from Google Labs, the Google News Timeline allows searchers to view news within a zoomable graphical timeline which can be adjusted by weeks, months, years, or decades. Data sources include “recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts and Twitter status messages, sports scores and various types of media like music albums and movies.”

Marshall Breeding writes about OCLC’s latest initiative for Library Journal’s Academic Newswire in – In Challenge to ILS Industry, OCLC Extends WorldCat Local To Launch New Library System. The article explains the move to expand WorldCat Local’s existing features to include circulation, delivery, and acquisitions functionality. The new service would eventually enable library subscribers to use the system as they would a locally installed ILS.

“While OCLC will offer these services at some level of annual subscription cost, it would displace large expenditures that libraries make in hardware, software, and personnel for their current ILS infrastructure. OCLC’s general approach is consistent with an emerging current IT trend for business automation services offered through diffusely distributed Web-accessible computing environments.”

Stan Schroeder at Mashable identifies 5 applications which help you crowdsource your queries via Twitter with 5 Ways to Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter. Adam Pash at Lifehacker also mentions using Twitter to ask questions and get answers in his post yesterday titled Six Ways You Should Be Using Twitter (that Don’t Involve Breakfast).

Steven Johnson writes about the future of the book for the Wall Street Journal in How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. In this insightful article, the author poses that new devices such as the Kindle and iPhone are changing the way people read, buy, and write books. According to Johnson, books will become increasingly social and accessible, however this increased access may lead to dimished attention, books being written with search engine rankings in mind, and new distribution models such as paying per chapter.

“Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, print books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep-focus reading. Online, you can click happily from blog post to email thread to online New Yorker article — sampling, commenting and forwarding as you go. But when you sit down with an old-fashioned book in your hand, the medium works naturally against such distractions; it compels you to follow the thread, to stay engaged with a single narrative or argument…

As a result, I fear that one of the great joys of book reading — the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author’s ideas — will be compromised. We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.”

Athabasca University Press has published Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training and licensed it under a Creative Commons License. The entire e-book is available for download via the AU Press website.

“This collection is for anyone interested in the use of mobile technology for various distance learning applications. Readers will discover how to design learning materials for delivery on mobile technology and become familiar with the best practices of other educators, trainers, and researchers in the field, as well as the most recent initiatives in mobile learning research. Businesses and governments can learn how to deliver timely information to staff using mobile devices. Professors can use this book as a textbook for courses on distance education, mobile learning, and educational technology.”

via Reference Notes

Tripwire Magazine has produced a mega-guide to over 100 WordPress tutorials. Anyone who is just starting out with this blogging platform, or wants to develop deeper knowledge about customization and features will want to check out the 100+ Massive WordPress Tutorial Collection. Some of the listed tutorials include:

• Social Networking with BuddyPress
• WordPress Theme Hacks
• Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7
• How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch
• Ultimate Guide to WordPress SEO – Keyword Density

The American Library Association has published a 40-page report titled The State of America’s Libraries stating that “Library use increases dramatically as economy sags; funding declines”.

“A Harris Poll released in September revealed that 68 percent of Americans have a library card, an increase of 5 percent since 2006. In-person visits increased 10 percent in the same period, and 76 percent of Americans had visited their local public library in the year preceding the survey, compared with 66 percent two years ago. Online-visit data were even more remarkable: 41 percent of library card holders visited their library websites in the year before the poll, compared with 24 percent in 2006.”

Also see the press release and download the print version here.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse