Libraryman

In fairly huge social networking news, if you aren’t using (or at least monitoring the maneuvers of) facebook much lately, you might consider firing up your account again. They have been adding outside app functionality (with a few hickups, natch) in ways I’d hoped might show up on a social library web site first. *grumble* The facebook Developers Platform will help you make your own if you are smarter than me in this regard. I lament that this didn’t show up in Libraryland first, but you know, I also wish I could have written Sgt. Peppers and wishin’ don’t mean I’ve got the chops, brother! Still, it’s made the weekend more interesting watching people/friends/colleagues dive in over the weekend. Superpatron (Edward V.) said it best via twitter when he sent out the message “You got your facebook in my twitter!”. I love you, you glorious geek!

In other, more lighthearted social networking news, Tweet Volume is a tool that tells you how often words are being used on twitter. Hmmm…anybody else see the word occurrence below as telling?

Thanks to thefreerangelibrarian for the Tweet Volume heads up. KGS, you are the bomb.

Just in the chatty fun!

Anybody coming to this afternoon Keynote presentation at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Emerging Technology Conference on Monday? I am!

The Santiago Library System has created a pretty spiffy flier for an upcoming event that I am very honored to be taking part in next month. I’ve had a chance to speak with a couple of the other presenters and I believe they will be quite interesting and certainly worth the time it takes to attend. I already know the audience ’round Santiago LS and MCLS land is pretty amazing, so it should be a great day all around (though I can admit that this is a bit of an intimidating crowd and not scare any potential attendees away, right?). At any rate, the event even includes lunch and a library tour, so how can you go wrong?

If you see me there be sure to say hello. I’ll do the same!

Thanks M!

This image in this post is just slightly freaky when you read what it includes and how the image came to be posted to the blog tonight. It’s deep, shallow and goes ’round and ’round.
So yesterday I blogged about Pandora and libraries (again, sorry), tonight I was working a bit at home and listening away to my good friend Pandora when a “frame ad” came up around the player. The ad? It was from the folks at Palm, for the Treo. In this series of ads, they mention the different ways you can integrate a Treo into your life. Interestingly, the ad I saw highlighted flickr. So, I whip out my Treo, while listening to Pandora, take a picture of the flickr/Treo/Palm/Pandora screen and upload it to flickr. Then I go into my blog editing software and write this post. Which will now include some code that will make a picture showing you an amazingly deep example of convergence show up for you. Enjoy!

We sure had fun talking, but will it be fun to listen to? Thanks to Allison and Steve at the Kankakee Public Library for working up this (not so) little ?BiblioTech? podcast. This is a very relaxed and hopefully somewhat inspiring library technology conversation. Even if the podcast thing isn?t your style, be sure to check out the KPL web site. It rocks the bells and they are the bees knees, baby. It truly was an honor to talk with them about LibraryMan, ?2.0″, ?getting things done?, and library tech stuff in general.

The KPL Podcast Page Is Here?

The “Keep Up! Practical emerging technology for you and your library” workshop is hitting the road again. Spend a fun, full day learning about a surprising variety of real, useable tools and concepts.

If the content is of interest, this really might be the class for you. I?ve debated when and how to share bits of the feedback from this class, but a recent work project had me reviewing a small sample of attendee comments. I seriously hesitated to post these for fear of seeming braggadocios, but remember, it?s the content (workshop subject) not the container (MP). These are direct quotes, honest:

“Informative and Fascinating”
“Engaging”
“Superb”
“Fabuwonderful”
“Outstanding”
“Humorous & effective”

“This was far and away the most informative and entertaining OCLC training I have ever been to.” *Obviously this person wasn’t a cataloger or ILL person.*
“…the most relevant and inspiring training I have been to”

“Michael is a gargantuan dork and I’ll bet he got beat up a lot in high school” Ok, ok, I made that last one up. The others were honest to goodness direct quotes.

Ready to attend? More info and sign-up links are HERE.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006
9:00 am-4:00 pm
Location: University of California, Davis, CA

Friday, September 8, 2006
9:00 am-4:00 pm
Location: Portland State University (Portland, OR)

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
9:00 am-4:00 pm
Location: Downtown Reno Public Library, Reno, NV

Hope to see you there!

“Would you be able to provide a brief but articulate description of exactly what my space is?” (for someone who knows the library, but does not use the internet much, if at all…maybe a board member?)

I sure can try! Quickly came up with this:

MySpace.com is an ?electronic community? web site used for ?social networking?. It is very popular and has over 58 million individual registered users, the majority of which are college age and under (though this trend is changing). When you sign up with MySpace, you can post descriptive information about yourself including text, pictures and even video. In large part, MySpace is so popular because it is a sort of ?one stop communication shop?. On MySpace, users can send email messages to each other, join interest based discussion groups, write ?blogs? and post public messages that all MySpace users can see, or post private messages that only their friends can see. Institutions and organizations are also creating MySpace accounts so that they can reach this massive user base. Many libraries have recently began creating MySpace accounts as well, in order to show their (often times) younger users that they are a readily available resource to them not just as a physical institution, but as an engaged member of their ?electronic community?. These outreach efforts have generally been very successful and well received. As people seek more and more information via electronic means, it important for us to consider how best to meet our users in an effective manner. While creating an institutional account may not be something every library will decide to do, researching MySpace is well advised across the industry.

Suggestions? Compliments? Condemnations?

SF and Bay Area library folks:

The “Keep Up! Practical emerging technology for you and your library” workshop that you always hear me talk about will be held in SF next week! Tuesday and Wednesday (April 18th and 19th)at the San Francisco Public Library to be exact. I just checked the sign-up sheets and there are still six spots open both days. Get ‘em while they’re hot!

**Update - As of Thursday, April 13, there are still six open spots for Tuesday’s class and three for Wednesday’s**

Here is a link you can follow to sign up for either class.

I just returned from teaching a revamped version of this very workshop in Honolulu last week. It was fun! We learned about all kinds of interesting library tech tools. I was also the very happy recipient of an authentic Hawaiian lei. Too cool!

Check it out! More Keep Up! Practical emerging technology for you and your library workshops are headed across the western US in April and May! You can sign up for any of these workshops (except Hawaii which is at capacity already) by following this link.

Monday, April 3rd at the University of Hawaii Manoa in Honolulu.
**This class has filled to capacity**

Tuesday, June 6 at the Claremont College Library in Claremont, California.

This will be an updated version of the class with a fair amount of new material. Beginning in July and going through December we will also offer a small batch of Keep Up! Workshops as well. Early speculation envisions us very likely seeing the class headed back to Oregon, Washington and…? Any suggestions? Please let me know!

Also, several libraries and library systems have had us bring the workshop to their library exclusively for a day or two or three. These “custom trainings” as we call them can often be arranged outside of the schedule mentioned above. This arrangement allows you to bring as many of your library staff (and they have to be from a single library or library system) to the training as your like. Some libraries have had us (me;) stay an extra day or two to do a couple/few three and 1/2 hour hands on practice sessions with class attendees as well. This has worked out VERY well! Make a blog, start using an aggregator and subscribing to RSS feeds, it’s all covered! Sweet! Please do bear in mind that due to scheduling it often takes 1-4 months for a mutually agreeable time for these trainings to arise.

Thanks so much to all of you that have come to the workshops! I really, really hope you took away some new, exciting, interesting and practical things to use in your library. Several people have told me they have and there are even blogs and RSS feeds out there to prove it! Woo Hoo!

See you soon!