Archive for April 2010

Matt Silverman at Mashable pulls together 20 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed. This useful list rounds up some interesting recent articles, many of which I indeed missed! Here are a few:

• How 5 Brands Are Mastering the Game of Foursquare
• 10 Amazing iPad App Video Demonstrations
• 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
• Why Chatroulette Is More Than Just…
• 5 Simple Social Design Tips From the Masters

Ning, the DIY (do-it-yourself) social network community has announced that they will no longer be offering users the free creation of their own social networks. Richard M. Byrne at the Free Technology for Teachers blog has gathered an impressive list of alternatives. Each application is briefly reviewed listing key features and introductory videos where available.

The Technology to Software blog rounds up the Top 12 Websites To Download Free E-Books. Although they left out Project Gutenberg it’s a useful list for e-book readers.

According to the Twitter feed coming from the Library of Congress, they will soon be acquiring the entire Twitter archive including all public tweets that have ever been posted since March 2006. They have promised further details to follow, so if you aren’t already an LOC Twitter follower, you may want to become one to stay updated on this exciting development.

UPDATE: From the Library of Congress blog: How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive.

Dainis Graveris at the Graphic and Web Design Blog gathers 33 Blogs To Make You a Social Media And Marketing Guru. If you’re interested in the social media space and/or marketing this is a great list. I read many of these blogs already, and can’t wait to check out the others, some of which I hadn’t heard of before.

This is the third installment in a 3-part series listing library-oriented iPhone applications – all links go to iTunes where you can download the apps. If you have a favorite book-related iPhone app that’s not listed here, please suggest it in the comments below, and be sure to check out parts one and two!

Book-Related iPhone Apps

eBooks & Audiobooks

	Stanza Cost: Free Stanza claims to be the most popular electronic book reader with over 1 million readers. They offer access to over 50,000 contemporary titles and an additional 50,000 free classics.
	Classics Cost: $.99 This app has over a dozen hand-picked, literary masterpieces in its collection including The Odyssey, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frankenstein, and Pride & Prejudice.
	Kindle for iPhone Cost: Free This simple app allows users to buy and read Kindle books on their iPhones as well as adjust the text size and add bookmarks.
	Audiobooks Cost: Free Over 1 million people have used this iPhone app to listen to over 2,800 classic audiobooks for free.
	Bookshelf Cost: $4.99 An ebook reader app which supports many different formats with images and formatted text.
	Free Books Cost: $1.99 23,469 classic books are accessible for free through this Free Books app.
Find Local Books
	LocalBooks Cost: Free Similar to UrbanSpoon for restaurants, LocalBooks lets users know about libraries, bookstores, and bookish events near their location.
	RedLaser Cost: $1.99 This extremely useful app lets users scan just about any barcode and receive search results for low online and local prices from hundreds of thousands of retailers. It works particularly well for books and WorldCat has now integrated their catalog with RedLaser so nearby libraries with the item will also appear in search results.
	Bookzee Cost: Free This is a location-based library book search for NYC.

More Resources

iPhone apps for Librarians
M-Libraries on Library Success Wiki
AppShopper

Aliza Sherman at WebWorkerDaily has created Tweeting 101: A Twitter Cheat Sheet. This fast, useful post is divided into the following categories:

• Why Use Twitter
• How to Use Twitter
• How to Make Your Tweets “Retweetable”
• How to Retweet
• Types of Tweets
• How to Use Hashtags
• #FollowFriday or #FF

Daniel Stein, digital marketing and consumer engagement expert from Evolution Bureau writes for Mashable about 6 Ways Brands are Using Social Media For Real-World Action. He discusses how some early adopter companies are experimenting with new ways to mobilize social media audiences.

1. Twitter Scavenger Hunt Engages Fans Globally
2. Students Create Virtual Graffiti on College Campuses
3. Users Participate in Tour de France via Web, Twitter & SMS
4. Crowdsourced T-Shirts Meet Twitter
5. Starbucks Offers Rewards via Social Media
6. Social Media for Social Good

Erik Mitchell, Ph.D has published Using Cloud Services for Library IT Infrastructure in the current issue of Code4Lib.

“While much of the focus on cloud computing in libraries has been on subscription service or platform (e.g. ILS hosting) there are cases where libraries need computing resources for requirements that are not provided by service or platform providers. This article looks specifically at the experience of one library in moving its IT infrastructure to cloud-based environments. The article seeks to address how well these systems fill library IT needs, asks what other elements define the success of the use of cloud-based infrastructure and concludes with a case study discussion of one experience.”

Tia Dobi at the Social Media Examiner puts together 12 Social Media Secrets From the World’s Top Superstars. This helpful post discusses tips from industry masters for leveraging the power of social media tools. Here are the top 6 secrets:

1. Engage Your Facebook Fans With Questions
2. ‘Listen’ to Know What to ‘Say’
3. Use Video to Turn Company Mistakes Into Gold
4. Leverage YouTube’s Keyword Power
5. Promote SMS Campaigns on Facebook and Twitter
6. Be Your Own Secret Shopper

This is the second installment in a 3-part series listing library-oriented iPhone applications – all links go to iTunes where you can download the apps. Part one listed libraries with iPhone applications, and part three will list book-related apps. If you know of any other database or vendor iPhone apps, please list them in the comments below, and stay tuned next week for part-three!

Library Vendor & Database Apps

	Airpac for iPhone Cost: Free This mobile catalog application from Innovative Interfaces integrates library locations with Google maps, offers patrons full catalog search and the ability to request, renew, and place items on hold.
	BookMyne for iPhone Cost: Free This iPhone app from SirsiDynix lets library patrons search the library catalog, place holds, renew items, and check their account details as well as navigate to the library’s home page.
	AccessMyLibrary Cost: Free This handy iPhone app from Gale uses GPS to find libraries within a 10-mile radius of your location. You can then select a library and access all its Gale electronic resources.
	SSRN Cost: Free This iPhone app allows patrons to access all of the 227,300 papers from the Social Science Research Network.
	arXiv Cost: Free The arXiv iPhone app gives researchers access to over a half million e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Nonlinear Sciences, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, and Statistics.
	AIP’s iResearch Cost: Free The American Institute of Physics’ iResearch iPhone app lets researchers sign into AIP’s journals via their institution’s wifi network to save articles to their devices for future reading offline.
	WorldCat Mobile Cost: Free Users can search through Worldcat’s collection of 1.5 billion items, find a nearby library, and map a route to a library through the WorldCat Mobile iPhone app.

I’ll be moderating the Cool Tools track with Steven Cohen at next week’s Computers in Libraries 2010 conference. Please stop by and say hello if you’re attending! I’ll also be hanging around the Neal-Schuman booth to answer questions about The Tech Set book series. Here’s my schedule:

Monday, April 12th Neal-Schuman booth 12:45 – 1:30 pm, 5:00 – 5:45 pm
Tuesday April 13th Neal-Schuman booth, times TBA
Wednesday April 14th Cool Tools track Regency E/F, Ballroom Level, 10:30 am – 4:30 pm

Hope to see you there!

iLibrarian has been nominated for a Salem Press Library Blog Award, many thanks to whoever submitted the nomination!!

Simon Mackie at WebWorkerDaily has put together 10 Simple Google Search Tricks. You can use all of these shortcuts and tips in Google’s basic search field. Here are the top five tricks:

1. Use the “site:” operator to limit searches to a particular site.
2. Use Google as a spelling aid.
3. Use Google as a calculator.
4. Find out what time it is anywhere in the world.
5. Get quick currency conversions.