Archive for August 2009

Max Atkinson, author of Speech-making & Presentation Made Easy, writes for BBC News Magazine about The problem with PowerPoint. The article discusses several potential problems with PowerPoint presentations including:

• Screens are magnets for everyone’s eyes
• Reading and listening distracts audiences
• Slides shouldn’t be just notes
• Information overload
• The bullet point problem

Josh Catone at Mashable suggests 3 Reasons Students Aren’t Ready for Digital Textbooks. And from his observations it seems that digital textbooks have some major hurdles to overcome before they’re ready for mass adoption such as:

• Cost Savings Must be Greater
• A Standard Format is Needed
• Questions of Ownership

The UK’s Guardian newspaper covers some of the changes happening in today’s libraries with Louise Tickle’s Academic libraries are undergoing a quiet revolution. The article proposes that “Being a librarian these days is all about technology and customer service; no time to stick your nose in a book”.

“Applying for a job in a university library because you “love reading” isn’t going to get you very far these days. These hallowed repositories of academic knowledge have changed beyond recognition over the last decade, and the people recruited to work in them have to be willing to embrace new technologies and customer service with an alacrity that would likely horrify the shushing custodians of the past.”

Kate Sheehan writes a thoughtful article about The Digital Divide Inside the Library for the ALA TechSource blog. Sheehan discusses the need for a strong technology skill set among reference librarians in addition to public service experience.

“Libraries need change and we need to get better and quicker at adapting–there isn’t room for actual luddites in the library. But when it comes to working with our colleagues, I think we’re headed toward a double standard. We need our front line staff to understand tech, to be sure, and even in the short time that I’ve been a librarian, I’ve seen huge leaps forward in that area. Tech savvy is increasingly like public service experience–it’s something organizations are unwilling to take a chance on. We expect librarians to keep up with tech and be willing to learn more about it, but we’re less skilled at differentiating between problematic resistance to change and thoughtfulness.”

via Jill Hurst-Wahl

Ben Parr at Mashable writes A Complete Guide to Facebook’s New Privacy Features. The article discusses public options for profiles and status updates, the rollout of Facebook’s new realtime search functionality and what to expect next.

Online College comes up with 100 Terrific Tips & Tools for Blogging Librarians. This massive list provides LIS bloggers with tips in the following areas:

• Basics
• Readership and Traffic
• Content
• Branding and Marketing
• Networking
• Design
• Blogging Platforms
• Extra Services
• Organization and Administrative Tips and Tools
• Miscellaneous

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb writes about 10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets. This is especially useful since tweets made over 1.5 weeks ago can no longer be searched using search.twitter.com. Here are her first 5 suggestions for creating your own archive:

1. The Archivist: A Desktop Tool for Archiving Searches
2. Twapper Keeper: Archive Tweets Based on Hashtags
3. Twitter Tools: Archive Tweets in WordPress
4. Twistory: Tweets in Your Calendar
5. SweetCron, AmpliFeeder, or Storytlr: A Lifestream of Tweets

The September 2009 issue of Walt Crawford’s Cites & Insights is now available. Be sure to check out this issue for an in-depth update of the state of both public and academic library blogs. Walt discusses the following:

• Where Are They Now?
• Survivors and Currency
• The Quintiles
• Post Frequency
• Comments
• Conversational Intensity

Social network FriendFeed – an aggregation service that enables users to create a personal stream of content from other social networks, and a microblogging application – was acquired by Facebook yesterday. The social networking giant sealed the deal with $50 million – $15 million in cash and $32.5 million in Facebook stock. For more coverage of this story check out these articles:

Facebook Acquires Start-Up FriendFeed – Wall Street Journal
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed – The New York Observer
Facebook Users: Here’s What FriendFeed Brings to the Family – ReadWriteWeb
The Cost Of FriendFeed: Roughly $50 Million In Cash And Stock – TechCrunch

The folks at Online Degree Programs have created a mega-list of the 100 Best Blogs for Library Science Students. If you’re an LIS student, or just someone looking for some interesting library-related blogs to read, you’ll want to check out this post. The blogs are categorized into the following sections:

• Universities
• Information Science & Systems
• Librarian 2.0
• Information Literacy
• Technology
• Resources
• News

Paul Boag at Smashing Magazine raises some very interesting points in 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging. In this helpful how-to article he takes a look at many of the reasons why corporate and organizational blogs fail and how to to avoid these mistakes. Check out the full post for his explanations of these pitfalls:

1. A blog does not magically generate traffic
2. Good corporate blog requires long term commitment
3. Teaser feeds are a wasted opportunity
4. You are not “engaging” anyone
5. Press releases shouldn’t appear on a blog
6. You sound like a faceless corporation
7. You need to show the warts and all
8. Marketers often make bad bloggers
9. You expect too much from your readers
10. Your competitors will read your blog – Get over it!

Barb Dybwad at Mashable creates a guide to improving your blogging workflow with 20 Simple Productivity Tools for Bloggers. Her recommendations are broken down into the following categories:

• Multiple Clipboard Tools
• Blog Right from Firefox with Scribefire
• Save Typing Time with Text Shortcuts
• Firefox Extensions for Working with Text
• Site-Specific Browsers
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Edit Images Right In Your Browser

Sam Dean at OStatic rounds up five free online books to help newbies get up to speed with OSS with 5 Free Online Open Source Books for Beginners. “They introduce basic concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), and the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications.”

Chris Brogan, social media guru, compiles A Brief and Informal Twitter Etiquette Guide. His recommendations for effectively utilizing the popular microblogging app include:

• A complete bio and avatar pic (I like people’s faces, but do what you will) is always a good idea. We want to know who you are. (inspired by Kendra).
• It’s helpful to be transparent about your work/employer in your profile, if your use of Twitter has any implications for your day job. (from Eden Spodek)
• Face to face you get a sense of how your idea is being received. No such thing on Twitter. So play nice. (from Carolyn Stephens)
• Be yourself. It is ok and welcome to be different on twitter. (from Sudha Jamthe)
• It’s okay to follow people you don’t know on Twitter. They can choose whether or not to follow you back.

Be sure to check out the full post for more.

For this month’s Stacking the Tech column I had a chance to interview three Library of Congress librarians about all of their recent digital initiatives.

The Library of Congress (LOC) has established itself as one of the leading institutions making use of social media to engage audiences and build community. And they have made great strides since January 2008 when they first began their Flickr Commons pilot. They have since launched a blog, a Facebook Page, YouTube and iTunes channels, and a Twitter account which claims over 13,000 followers. Most recently they have begun experimenting with the Semantic Web/Linked Data and cloud computing. I was fortunate enough to have a chance to chat with three of their librarians about these initiatives.