Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

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.