Special Librarian Discounts at the Institute for Competitive Intelligence…07.31.09

There are discounts available for SLA (Special Libraries Association) members for workshops at the Institute for Competitive Intelligence which descibes itself this way: “The Institute for Competitive Intelligence was founded in 2004 to provide post-graduate professionals a solid and flexible CI training program to become a certified CI-Professional. Our workshops are available in German and English. We serve three continents, six countries and 10 cities. No other organization runs more CI workshops annualy than we do! Our general principles are uncompromising quality of education as well as intensive, practically orienta ted learning. In cooperation with renowned experts, a modular educational program was developed that prepares attendees for the high demands placed on market and competitive analysts. You can select the certificate program or choose par ticular courses according to your interests or re quirements…” DISCOUNT INFORMATION IS HERE: “Special discount on San José workshops for SLA members

The Institute for Competitive Intelligence offers a unique, incremental and exclusive discount to members of SLA (Special Libraries Association) registering for the following workshops. Workshop Date Venue Price ICI-1 Competitive Intelligence Basics Sept 1-2 2009 San José, USA US$1575 ICI-6 Fundamental Competitive Intelligence Ana ly sis Sep. 3-4 2009 San José, USA US$1790 ICI-5 Primary Research (Human Intelligence) Sep. 7-8 2009 San José, USA US$1890 All SLA members may deduct a special SLA discount from the total costs, depending on the number of workshops registered for (applicable until August 15th 2009). 1 workshop: 25% 2 workshops: 35% 3 workshops: 40% For more information and registration see our special SLA members brochure and registration form! …”

Return on Investment – Return on Imagination…07.31.09

Here is a VERY good presentation on the paradox but importance of risk found via The Librarian By Day that is worth spending the time reviewing and further thought:

New Sony E-Readers, 1 Million FREE e-Books, etc…07.31.09

From DigitalKoans today:

“Sony has announced that one million public domain books from Google are available for its current e-book readers.

In related news, there are rumors that two new Sony e-book readers may be released in August.

Read more about it at ‘Sony E-Readers Get Access to 1M Free Public Domain Books from Google‘ and ‘Sony to Offer 1 Million Google Books through Its Readers.’…”

From KINDLE REVIEW, etc. blog on the new Sony PRS-600

“…Sony Reader PRS 600 – Key Features

1. TouchScreen – confirmed from manual.
2. It mentions MP3 encoding technology which hints at a voice recording or voice memo function.
3. Might be flexible – the board for touchscreen, eInk, and back pane all say ‘flexible’ in the manual. Could this be a flexible, unbreakable screen?
4. Excellent Font Support – It comes with an in-built Font Fusion Engine from BitStream that supports Chinese, Korean, Japanese. It also claims to support ANY font. The default fonts look good (these are fonts on my PC, not on the Sony) -

Sony Reader PRS 600 Default Fonts

5.  Extendible memory – The manual indicates SD Card and Memory Stick Duo are both supported.

6. Very compact – It’s 4.87″ by 6.87″ by .4 inches. That’s roughly 11 cm by 17.4 cm by .98 cm.

Sony Reader PRS-600 – Key Details

1. 6 inch screen.
2. Very light at 10.1 oz (286 g). Very thin at .4″.
3. Sony Reader 600 will be available in Red, Black and Silver.
4. Has a touchscreen. The panel below the screen might be touch sensitive buttons (which would be cool).
5. Can be charged via AC adapter or USB.
6. Sony Reader 600 has 380 Mb of storage capacity.
7. It also has SD Card and Memory Stick Duo support.
8. Battery Life of the Sony Reader 600 is 7,500 pages…”

You can look at the Sony Reader 300 manual in PDF or get the Sony 300 manual’sKindle compatible version…”

Smack Down! “The Book vs. The Kindle, Round 1: The Buy Counter”…07.31.09

Interesting video…but I still want a Kindle!

FREE Webinar – “Introduction to Blogging for Nonprofits and Libraries”…07.30.09

Introduction to Blogging for Nonprofits and Libraries
Thursday, August 6, 11 a.m. Pacific time

Is your organization looking to expand your reach and communicate more directly with your supporters and community? Are you considering starting a blog to help you do this?

Join Becky Wiegand from TechSoup during this free webinar as she interviews Allyson Kapin, blogger for Care2′s nonprofit marketing blog Frogloop, and Jason Griffey, who literally wrote the book on blogging for libraries to discuss the ins and outs of starting a blog for your organization. From considerations like which tool to use, how much staff time to commit, whether volunteers and interns should help, best practices, and how to launch your blog into the blogosphere, we’ll discuss all the basics of how to get started.

Register today!

Twittering Lone Wolf…07.30.09

Trying to keep up with various media and now using Twitter more, I can see why some have abandoned blogging or curtailed their efforts in that arena. I still prefer the blog, however, despite the extra time.

BTW, the Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian is LoneWolfMLS on Twitter.

MyInfoQuest Presentation – “A Collaborative Project from a Librarian’s Perspective…07.30.09

Thanks to IamLibrarian for posting this presentation about MyInfoQuest by Alison Miller.  In a recent post, I highlighted the MyInfoQuest service.

The Handheld Librarian Presentation

View more presentations from Alison .

FREE Conduit – An Option for Library Toolbars…07.30.09

Thanks to the SocialNetworkingLibrarian for the following:

“…Basically…you create a special toolbar for your library and then you install them on the browsers on your computers. You can include links to your library website, to news websites, important or useful websites for your college, or community as well as pictures and logos important to your library. One of the best and easiest places you can go to create a library toolbar is Conduit...

Conduit is very easy to use, open source so its free, and does not require you to download any separate programs…”

Librarians and Others – Change and Influence…07.30.09

The following gleanings are useful thoughts on change from Ed Batitsta‘s post On Change: Inclination, Motivation, Action. This ties in with his previous work on the Influence Pyramid of which many here have found interesting and helpful.

“…I believe that our actions rest on a foundation of inclination and motivation…Here’s what I mean by those terms in the context of a proposed change:

Inclination

• Am likely to change?
• Am I inclined or not to make this change?
• How does it align with my life and my preferences?
• Why might this process be easy or difficult for me?

Motivation

• What are my goals?
• What motivates me to make this change?
• What optimal results do I expect?
• What minimal results will I accept?

Action

• What steps will result in forward motion?
• What will encourage me to act?
• How do I move from reflection to action?
• And what will keep me moving ahead?

Here’s a graphic representation:

…1) This model describes the conditions that support sustainable change.

2) The questions that accompany each of the model’s components–inclination, motivation, and action–allow us to determine whether the conditions are right for change and to understand how we might influence those conditions.

3) And if we define sustainable change as ‘influencing ourselves,’ there’s a clear parallel between this model and the Influence Pyramid–food for future thought….”

Of course, many fail to realize that the only person we can really change is ourselves. As we change, we affect those around us and become an influence for change – hopefully positive change.

– Today’s “2 cents worth” from the Lone Wolf

Content and Knowledge Management Uses for Wikis in Libraries…07.29.09

From Wikis: Knowledge is Only a Click Away:

“…Wikis can be used by libraries as content and knowledge management tools for:

internal communication (University of Connecticut Libraries)

staff resources or training (Antioch University of New England Library Staff Training and Support Wiki)

conference information (CLA Calgary 2005, ALA Chicago 2005)

planning conferences, programs, and projects (Durham County Library Strategic Plan)

institutional collaboration (University of Calgary)

professional collaboration (Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki, LIS Wiki, LIS Publications Wiki)

social networking and sharing for librarians (Library Day In The Life Wiki)

community information (Davis Wiki, California, Loudounpedia, Virginia)

research guides (Ohio University Library Biz Wiki, Norwich University)

reader’s advisory guides (iRead)

hosting a website (Bull Run Library)

supplementing a website (Grand Rapids Public Library Wiki)…”

Cloud Computing Risks to Consider…07.29.09

LifeHacker’s The Hidden Risks of Cloud Computing lists 4 potential serious risk of using cloud computing:

” Every day more users move their computing lives from the desktop to the cloud and rely on hosted web applications to store and access email, photos, and documents. But this new frontier involves serious risks that aren’t obvious to most…

Lesser Privacy Protection Under the Law…

Weak Security Systems That Are Too Easy to Break Into…

Data Lock-in and Third-party Control…

Server Unavailability and Account Lockout…

…The key is to know what you’re getting into when you make that choice, to ratchet up your personal security mechanisms (like alternate email addresses and password choices) and to lobby for better user protection by hosting providers in the cloud…”

“Users Reveal Critical Factors for Virtual Reference Service Excellence”…07.29.09

Ala 09 Best Practices Connaway Radford Final

View more documents from Questionpoint Oclc.

Lone Wolf in Social Media & Attention Distraction…07.29.09

Despite the current “wisdom” of having all your social media strategically connected, I have chosen to keep my blog and my Twitter accounts reserved for professional activity beyond my employment.  Facebook and the majority of my non-employer, web-based,  email accounts are reserved for family, close personal friends, and personal business (I keep 1 web mail account for communications from social media networks).

I used Flickr photo sharing until Yahoo! decided to charge $’s for reasonable storage space while continuing to hold some of my images hostage although they did give me a couple of weeks to snatch my pictures back. Time ran out, however, so now I just keep photos on CDs and my personal desktop instead of hopping to Picasa or elsewhere.

I have a limited profile on LinkedIn but don’t bother with it much since I’m not actively seeking work.  My blog is listed there along with a link to my general online CV/Resume page.

BTW, I use Bloglines for an agregator despites its flaws and down time although I think Google Reader is better and use it occasionally.  My favorite browser is Chrome because it seems faster and the features suit my. All the browsers I use though crash occasionally. If I found one that didn’t, it would be top pick regardless of anything else.

Of course, we need to keep our social media and information glut in perspective – easier said than done.  Check out In Defense of Distraction from NY Magazine… a long, but good read relevant to us all:

“…before the founders of Google had even managed to get themselves born, the polymath economist Herbert A. Simon wrote maybe the most concise possible description of our modern struggle: ‘What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.’ As beneficiaries of the greatest information boom in the history of the world, we are suffering, by Simon’s logic, a correspondingly serious poverty of attention…

It’s too late to just retreat to a quieter time. Our jobs depend on connectivity. Our pleasure-cycles—no trivial matter—are increasingly tied to it. Information rains down faster and thicker every day, and there are plenty of non-moronic reasons for it to do so. The question, now, is how successfully we can adapt…

…because attention is a limited resource—one psychologist has calculated that we can attend to only 110 bits of information per second, or 173 billion bits in an average lifetime—our moment-by-moment choice of attentional targets determines, in a very real sense, the shape of our lives…“

“Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action”…07.29.09

Mashable! today has a useful post today from Josh Catone titled Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action excerpted here:

“…below is a list of the top 7 places to watch great minds in action…

1. TED…

2. Pop!Tech…

3.  Business Innovation Factory…

4. Gel…

5.  Bil…

6.  Big Think…

7. Idea City…”

Another Quality Library Channel Video from ASU…07.29.09

Here is another great, short library video from the ASU library channel – truly a cut above:

Why Patrons, Customers, Librarians, Etc. Go Online – Intent Index Results…07.29.09

Thanks to Stephen Abram of  Stephen’s Lighthouse for his post Why Do People Go Online for drawing attention to the Ruder Finn Intent Index research data and interactive visualization- click on image below.

Google’s Alexander Macgillivray on the Google Book Search Settlement…07.29.09

New Forrester Study — Trended Online Activities…07.28.09

This Forrester Research data fro Mashable! shows the doubling of social networking users since 2007.

TED Talks “Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success”…07.28.09

“Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure — and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments…” He discusses “job snobberty”…

Harris Poll – Consumer Perceptions About Twitter…07.28.09

Would you like to know more? Read: Twitter’s Biggest Problem: Most People Still Don’t Know What It’s There For

“Social media success: mapping metrics to strategy”…07.28.09

Thanks to Jane Hart for posting this presentation by Beth Kanter on measuring social media:

“…For a fuller write-up of Beth’s conference presentation, see her article in Social Media Today: Bridge Conference: Social Media ROI: Maping metrics to strategy.

Related SMIL Handbook resource: Measuring social media success“

Bridge Conference Slides

View more presentations from kanter.

New Search Engine Yebol Seems to Deliver…07.28.09

Read “The new search engine Yebol is good at what it does” from Pandia Search Engine News for more about Yebol.  Below is a video demonstration.

Colombia’s Digital Library Now in Beta…07.28.09

Thanks to the Bilingual Librarian for this about Colombia’s digital library:

“The Biblioteca Digital Colombiana (Colombia’s Digital Library) is up and running (in beta). This service will allow you to search the OPACs of various educational institutions with one query. Work on this portal started back in 2002, with the collaboration of 13 local universities, with later help from Colciencias, the Ministry of Education, and RENATA.

When conducting a search you’ll find one search box…”

Open Library Project Final Report Released…07.27.09

You can download now The Open Library Project Environment Final Report which includes:

“…Project Goals

Project Strategy
Assumptions That Frame the Design of OLE
Project Scope:

• Vision
• Characteristics of the OLE Framework
• Functional Scope
• Technology Approach
• Governance

Next steps
Summary assessment
Postscript
Appendix A: Project Activities, Timeline and Participants:

• Summary of Activities
• Organizations participating in OLE Project activities
• OLE Project timeline

Appendix B: Reference Model…”

Web Archiving from the California Digital Library…07.27.09

California Digital Library’s Web Archiving Service’s first collections :

“…In 2005, The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program awarded a grant to the California Digital Library and its partners at New York University Libraries and the University of North Texas Library to provide librarians and archivists with the tools to capture, curate and preserve web publications. One result of that grant is the Web Archiving Service, which produced the archives available here. Curators at University of California Libraries, Stanford University Libraries and New York University Libraries along with a growing number of institutions have used these tools to save web publications for researchers…”

Visualizing $1 Trillion…07.27.09

“…Amazon’s Acquisitions and Investments, Visualized”…07.27.09

This is a really nice visualization posted on TechCrunch:

“… All credit goes to MeetTheBoss for creating this visualization (better quality image available when you click through)…”

OCLC Releases WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway…07.26.09

OCLC reports:

“OCLC has released the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway, a new service that helps libraries and other institutions maximize the visibility of unique primary source materials, such as digital photos, newspapers, letters and diaries, through WorldCat on the Web.

The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is available to all users of OCLC CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software at no additional charge.

The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway offers libraries a self-service tool to easily upload metadata from their unique digital content to WorldCat, the world’s largest online resource for finding items held in libraries. Once the metadata is in WorldCat, libraries’ digital collections are more visible and discoverable by Web searchers through WorldCat.org, WorldCat Local (including the ‘quick start’ version), Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines.

‘Libraries, museums and archives should do whatever they can to get their materials available online and expose their collections to users—wherever they are—on the Web,’ said Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research. ‘The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is an easy and effective way to do this.’…

One of the WorldCat lists created by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute can be found here www.worldcat.org/profiles/tompinch/lists/772561…

More information on the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway can be found on the Web atwww.oclc.org/gateway…”

How to Use ALA Connect…07.26.09

Librarian – Rebrand Yourself Online…07.25.09

From Wired’s Reinvent Yourself Online:

“…Bateman cites four keys to successful rebranding:

…Individuality

Figure out specifically what distinguishes the new you from the old. ‘Successful brands focus on what makes them distinct and relevant.’

Authenticity

You can’t fake core values. They need to be genuine aspects of your personality. ‘If you choose a course of action that’s not authentic, you won’t be able to keep it up.’

Commitment

This is no one-shot deal. You have to make a lasting turnaround. ‘Commit and never waver.’ Avoid linking your new profiles and webpages to the old and, when possible, delete all pages which no longer represent your ‘brand.’

Communication

Broadcast the new you. Delete your Facebook profile, start a blog with a fresh domain, revise your username throughout the net, and post relentlessly to create a massive new Google footprint…”