Recycle your old gadgets and get significant dollars in return! The two sites that do this the best are YouRenew and Gazelle.
Just look up your device on the website, answer questions about the plugs/discs you have, the condition of the device, and you get a quote back on how much they’ll give you. Do this with all the devices you want to get rid of, and they’ll send you a box in the mail, postage pre-paid. Just dump the stuff in and ship it back, then wait for your check!
Even if the device isn’t worth anything, they will still recycle it for you for free — which is better than many of the local electronics recycling programs in the area that charge beaucoup bucks for recycling. And none of the device’s components will end up in a landfill — that’s a promise from the companies.
As an example, my old third generation iPod Classic (black and white screen – oh my!) in good condition with all the original cables & whatnot is worth $15 at Gazelle & $12 at YouRenew. Better than I could get on Craigslist 
Gather all the super old stuff you have lying around the library from past projects or test pilots gone awry. Old digital cameras come to mind! Unless your city/county/university has a policy against getting $ for your old junk, then this might let the library bring in a few hundred extra dollars rather quickly. Both sites also allow you to hold fundraising drives by asking donors to recycle their gadgets and donate the money to you. Nice!
Registration is now open for the Reference Renaissance 2010 Conference, being held on August 9th and 10th, 2010 in Denver. Reference is not dead. To the contrary, I believe that reference services are the key service that libraries have that no other institution does. It’s the one thing we do that no one else can…and now, when we’re losing funding and are unable to continue expensive programming and events services (what many libraries used as a replacement for reference as their key service), we can still afford to provide reference and research expertise to the community. Let’s re-focus, and re-energize this area of our services. I look forward to seeing what the “new library” looks like in 5 years.
From eSchool News, survey results on digital natives’ technical support needs in a college environment. Their findings? Perhaps counter-intuitively, digital natives need more IT support than they are getting. Only 4 in 10 said they’re getting adequate support. Is this a gap that academic libraries can help to fill through troubleshooting tech classes, basic tech skills tutorials, and even perhaps direct support?
via @buffyjhamilton
Amazing facts and figures about instant messaging from the Royal Pingdom website. How many users are on the various networks? When did the different services come onto the market? How many messages are sent daily? How many messages does each user send on average? + a ton more. Nice report!
via resourceshelf
Hunch: Get personal recommendations on literally everything with a social data predictive engine & answers to simple questions like “what’s your favorite color?” or “do you prefer evenings or mornings?” etc. It’s pretty accurate and strangely awesome. Just for the curiosity factor alone, enjoy trying it out!
Overdrive finally launched its app for iPhones. Overdrive already has apps for Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. Check out your mobile eBooks! Enjoy!
Cindi Trainor is known best as an awesome librarian, but also as the talented portrait photographer at library conferences. Learn from her genius!
She’s written a 3-part series of posts on library photography on the ALA TechSource blog. Read all three parts to learn how to take better photos at your library:
You guys know Answers.com, right? It’s a huge Q&A site, rather like Yahoo Answers but better because there’s a lot less useless “chaff” questions than there are on Yahoo. Now Answers.com is now taking questions (& answering them) through Twitter. Just send a message to @answersdotcom. Sound familiar? Kind of like what some libraries are doing as a supplemental contact/reference medium for customers? See the Tech Crunch story for more info.
I love this PowerPoint presentation on technology gender politics: “What it Takes to Be a Digital Woman” by Taly Weiss. I found it through a Slideshare recommendation. That site is way to smart for its own good – it makes me want to look at slides all day long, which kind of says a lot since I hate PowerPoints as a learning tool…
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