Facebook has announced that next month it will be launching location-based services. This is likely in response to the very popular location-based services Gowalla and Foursquare (which I have some really weird ideas about for libraries). Location-based features connect the virtual with the physical, through people’s mobile devices. For instance, letting you know who else nearby you is a Facebook friend, or seeing who in your neighborhood is Tweeting.
Yelp tried adding the “check in” feature to its mobile platform, but that hasn’t caught on yet. Will Facebook fall to the same fate? Or will it take over this area of services, Goliath trouncing the poor little Davids in our story, Gowalla and Foursquare? Only time will tell.
TechSoup has a job opening in San Francisco for a full time technology analyst. Sweet! Check it out!
From TechSoup4Libs on Twitter, Tech Soup is holding a free Twitter webinar this Thursday, so make sure you take a look at it and sign up if you want to learn more about how Twitter fits into libraries, how to use it, and how to make it work for your customers.
According to Cisco, we will soon be able to download the complete Library of Congress in 1 second. Wow! Cisco announces a new router system to triple internet speeds.
I’m going to start trying a new format for my blog. I have found that with my schedule as it is (14 hours a day away from home on average) that it’s impossible to write up a number of serious, lengthy blog posts each day. I just don’t have the time! I’m experimenting with voice recognition software to see if I can “blog” in the car as I’m driving on my commute from Hades, but until then I’m left with little time to myself.
What I think I do well is pull out a few gems of wonderfulness after my daily ongoing scan through oodles of pages, links, Tweets, blog posts, site updates, advertisements, and newsletters. So that’s what I’m going to focus on with this new format. I’ll scan all my sources as usual, and put up lots of short little posts pointing to resources, articles, tech news, you name it. Some of the stuff you’ll see here will be duplicates from my Twitter account (TheLiB). But there will be stuff on Twitter that’s not here, and stuff here that’s not on Twitter. So if you want both, and like both, be mindful of that 
I also plan on still writing a lengthy article from time to time when something inspires me. I’ve got a few waiting in my head on topics like libraries & augmented reality, getting around library eBook DRM, the ethics of being a presenter/speaker, blah blah blah.
At any rate, let me know what you think of the new format and I promise if you tell me you hate it I won’t hate you We’ll see how it goes, and who knows? We might change again….and again….and again.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new report this morning about the consumption of news in a digital setting. The report can be found on the Pew website. Some of the interesting findings:
- 92% of Americans surveyed use multiple places & platforms to get their daily news
- local & national television stations still come out ahead of the internet as news sources
- 59% of Americans surveyed use both online & offline news sources
- 33% of cell phone owners access news on their phones
- 28% of internet users have customized homepages with news sources (e.g. iGoogle)
- 37% of internet users have actually participated in news dissemination, creation, or commenting
- 75% of those who get news online find news through email forwards or through friends’ posts on social networking sites
- 52% of those who get news online also share links to news with others through email or social networking
- 55% report that it is now easier to keep up with news and information than it was five years ago, and yet…
- 70% feel overwhelmed by the amount of news and information available
So how does this affect libraries? Well, we have an opportunity to help act as filters for our communities. Why not create a great webpage that offers widgets with headlines from local & national & international news sources in different media (radio, newspaper, blogs, television, podcasts, etc.)? Why not offer classes on finding good news sources? Why not present tutorials on the great news digesting widgets & personalized homepages for our customers?
Why not be the community resource that helps people with that last item about how people feel overwhelmed by too much news? That last issue really is a big one for me. It’s the gap into which reference librarians can step. Dealing with information & information overload is a key resource we can offer our communities. I see few libraries doing it, and I sincerely hope that more of us will fill that gap and focus more on that need in the community.
After a lifetime as a PC user, today I bought a MacBook! I am both excited and nervous, as literally the last time I used a Mac was in the junior high school newspaper club (oh yeah, you remember those little Apple computers!). Needless to say, I’ve had enough experience with PCs, troubleshooting, software, tweaking, security-proofing, and speed enhancing that I could probably guide anyone else making the jump from Apple to PCs. But I am in need of help myself right now!
I will note that I am still the proud owner of an Android phone, and do still support the open development platform in general. And I’m super peeved that most of our library’s audio books are now inaccessible to me. Feh. But…I had it up to here with Windows 7, with HP, and with skeevy Microsoft screwing around with substandard product releases. So, here I am
If you are a Mac person, please either comment below or email/IM/text/whatever me with any tips you have for a newbie Mac owner, particularly one who is used to running literally everything in a PC platform.
If you have EBSCO databases, and a chat widget for reference services, then check this hot stuff out from Paul Pival on The Distant Librarian: Embedding Chat Widgets within EBSCO Databases. It’s a new feature within EBSCO, and Paul points to step by step instructions on how to do it yourself. Easy peasy!
“So many librarians are steeped in technology that you learn to become a cybrarian. I am a referencce librarian and an instructional librarian. As I’m asked questions–whether I answer them by researching the Web, or talk to you via e-mail–I think of a library now as a place without walls.” –Kay Cutler, University of Virginia Library
I saw this awesome quote in a “Cybrarian” job write-up from 2001 that my librarian colleague Angie Miraflor sent me. It is a pamphlet on Cybrarians, and is part of the Emerging Occupation Brief from Chronicle Guidance Publications. The whole thing is highly amusing. The fact that they isolated Cybrarian as a separate job is awesome. The technologies from 2001 that they chose to highlight as critical to the profession are hilarious: email, CD-ROMs, capital-I “Internet,” and capital-W “Web.”
But for all that, the quote is still a good one…and applies to each and every one of us today. We are all cybrarians. We all work with the technology every day and we all are expected to be as expertly comfortable with the web as we are with our physical collections. Are you comfortable with both? If not, think about some professional development activities that can help you gain that elusive sense of ease. If you need some suggestions, I’m happy to help. Good luck, ye Cybrarians of the world!
Check out my new post on the ALA Learning Blog: 10 Smart Phone Apps to Help You Be a Better Trainer. I give you ten ideas for programs that you can take anywhere with you and make your classes and trainings easier and better. Enjoy!
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