CC image used courtesy of holeymoon on flickr

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 1/29/2010 thru 2/4/2010

1. about dismantling the echo-chamber… more on the echo chamber
2. Content Creators & Consumers (& the iPad) – an interesting post on who the audience of the iPad is. I know its not me, but I’ve had conversations with enough people who are just waiting to get one that I know there is an audience no matter what the techies feel its lacking.
3. Facebook Is Working On A Foursquare-Killer
4. Why Smart People Don’t Learn from Failures – its ok to fail, just be sure you learn something from it.
5. President’s budget freezes library funding, omits school libraries from education increase if you haven’t heard or read about this you need to and read Buffy Hamilton’s response An Indecent Proposal
6. Don’t feed the trolls, unless you’re feeding them tranquilizers – great article on how to handle blog comments, including how to handle trolls
7. 10 Steps to Promote Learning in Your Conference Presentation
8. Information and services should be equal
9. But, I Like My Loser Friends! great post from Mary Schmidt at Lip-Sticking in response to The Most Important Success Tip:Stop Lying Down with Dogs, Already from Copyblogger
10. ALA Learning -5 Tips for Trainers to Prevent TechFail

Similar Posts:

• Top Ten Links – Week 3
• Top Ten Links Week 4
• Top Ten Links Week 6

My hand selected best links I shared on Twitter from 1/8/2010 through 1/14/2010 in no particular oder:

1. Just call me Tenzing Norbook, I guess. Toby Greenwalt’s response to Seth Godin’s post about libraries and the discussion that takes place in the comments.
2. 2010: The Only Year of the E-Reader great article from Fast Company on why, despite the awesomeness of many of the new ereaders, they wont be sticking around long.
3. Top Innovators Practice 5 Skills the Rest of Us Don’t if you can stand yet another article about innovation the 5 skills are something we should all be doing, innovator or not.
4. To Know the Library Is To Love the Library — But Who Knows the Library? Toby’s article on the Huffington Post
5. A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, and Principals (Part I)
6. How to remove yourself from a Twitter List – lets face it, check what twitter lists you’re on is just one more part of being aware of your online identity, if you show up on one you don’t like you have some options
7. Perpetual Beta – a new blog from Jason Griffey and American Libraries, about technology of course.
8. Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English – another fine video from the guys at CommonCraft
9. The Alexander Graham Bell Guide to Changing the World – ideas are good, action is better.
10. All the ones from ALA Learning – blog authors introduction & interviews, and two new bloggers! Buffy Hamilton and Lauren Pressley!

Similar Posts:

• 10 Best Links from Twitter – Week in Review
• Top Ten Links Week 15
• Top Ten Links Week 23

CC image courtesy of Bill Gracey - Gone to Mexico on flickr

The issue of control comes up over and over again when we talk about the online world. It recently it came up at Internet Librarian in many different ways, including:

• How do I stop a staff member from wasting time on Facebook?
• How do we control what staff are saying online?
• Management wants everything posted online (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc) to go through PR.
• We don’t want employees to be able to access social networking sites?
• What about privacy?
• We can’t allow just anyone to post a comment without approving it first.
• How do we know a student is who they say they are?

I have answers to all of these questions, but these questions aren’t what this is about, what they represent is, control. Or the illusion of control.

The desire for control comes from fear. Fear of change, of the unknown, of doing things differently, of a situation not created by us, of taking risks. It is human nature to fear these things, it’s how we’ve survived.  So is adaptation and times are changing, just as they always do, and we need to adapt.

In the internet age your image/brand no longer belongs to you. It belongs to your customers. The things they have always been saying are now online for the whole world to see. The content and commentary they post about you may rank higher in search engines than your site or content. You can’t stop them. Every attempt you make will be like fighting the Hydra, cut off a head, two will grow back. I promise.

Prevent comments on your website? They’ll start their own blog or Twitter account or website. Implement a filter to block social networking sites? They will find a way around it (and you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face).

Stop wasting time trying to get control, you might be fooling your boss or the board or yourself, but you are not fooling your staff or more importantly your customers. Better yet, when you stop spending time trying to get control or pretending that you have it, it frees you and your time to address the real issues.

Still not ready to let go? Think about these questions from Andrew McAfee :

• Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time?
• If not, why not?
• Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers?
• Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties?
• Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

Still not convinced? Or need to convince someone else? Try reading these:

• The Illusion of Brand Control
• Power And The Illusion Of Control
• M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth Degree
• Case Study: Setting Content Free at Ford Motor Company
• What you can control and what you can’t.
• Social Media and The Reality of Control
• On Social Media And Culture Shift
• Why the 54% of companies blocking access to social media should unblock
• The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

*Up Next – What you can do after you’ve accepted control is an illusion.Similar Posts:

• How to Monitor Your Personal Brand (For Free)
• How social media can hurt your library
• The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

CC image courtesy of Lights Out Photos on flickr

Last week I (and many others) spent a lot of time documenting the Internet Librarian conference, photos, tweets, blog posts, facebook updates. Did the act of digitally documenting the events change anything? Did the process of lifestreaming change my (and others) behavior, perception of what was happening and memories of it. Will we remember it better or worse?

A recent article from CNN Do digital diaries mess up your brain? looks at the effects of lifestreaming.  Just knowing others are watching you may change the types of experiences you choose to have, from books to movies to where you eat and what you wear.

“If we have experiences with an eye toward the expectation that in the next five minutes, we’re going to tweet them, we may choose difference experiences to have, ones that we can talk about rather than ones we have an interest in,” he said.

It also detaches you from what’s happening at the moment. If you’re focused on tweeting what’s happening, you’re not fully engage in what’s happening.

But recording everything you do takes people out of the “here and now,” psychologists say. Constant documenting may make people less thoughtful about and engaged in what they’re doing because they are focused on the recording process, Schwartz said.

What does that do to our actual memories of events? Memories are shaky at best even when you’re completely focused. If you’re only half there, will you remember it later without the aid of digital documentation? What would I rather have a memory of something or documentation of it to prove I was there? What if that documentation goes away?

It makes me think, I do want to be living and experiencing life to the fullest. Does this mean I’ll put down the camera, the cell phone, the laptop? I don’t know. Probably not at conferences, but I’ll be thinking hard about doing it in other areas of my life. What good is lifestreaming an experience if I’m not fully enjoying it?Similar Posts:

• We Want to Know What You Think
• Books: A Love Letter
• The Facebook Brouhaha – yeah you’re mad, but did you leave?

photo by DCvision2006 on Flicrk

We’ve all seen warnings and stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of status updates or photos on social medial sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

CNN is has a new one with some social networking don’ts

1. Don’t announce interviews, raises or new jobs

2. Don’t badmouth your current or previous employer

3. Don’t mention your job search if you’re still employed

First I think number 2 should include – “or coworkers”, really nothing good can come of that either. But the point I want to add for librarians (library workers) everywhere is

4. Don’t badmouth your customers.

We all get frustrated, we all have bad days,  I understand that, but venting on social media sites isn’t the solution and it could cause real problems for your library.  Your customers may read what you wrote, they are more tech savvy than you give them credit for. In addition to some old fashioned hurt feelings this can lead to some real problems for your library. They could complain to someone at the library, which means staff will need to spend time dealing with this issue. They could email it all their friends or maybe the newspaper, this is bad PR no library needs.  Or they could just never come back, which is contradictory to the mission of libraries, and loosing patrons is never good for libraries.  Libraries don’t need bad PR, especially not now when so many are facing funding cuts.

If you don’t care about how it will affect your library keep in mind your boss may read what you wrote, there are endless ways this could happen.  I can’t imagine a library manager anywhere being happy that an employee is publicly badmouthing patrons.  There are a wide range of outcomes depending on what was said, how the library handles custom service issues, but being fired is a possibility.

Think being anonymous will protect you? think again.  Think having a private account will protect you? It might, unless there is a glitch & its made public, even briefly, or until you *friend* the wrong person.

Your best plan is not to put anything online you aren’t prepared for the whole world to see.  Just don’t do it. Think twice before you post that next Facebook or Twitter update or write that next blog post.

Additional Reading

• Be nice to Customers – even online
• How to Avoid Getting Fired by Facebook
• FACEBOOK FIRED: 8% of US Companies Have Sacked Social Media Miscreants
• How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should
• Twitter Tips: How to Safely Blend the Personal and the Professional
• Be Careful What You Post

Similar Posts:

• Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go
• What Libraries Should Know Before Creating a Facebook Page – Libraries & Facebook Update 2
• Don’t Miss These Twitter and Facebook Guides from Mashable

David Lee King knows a lot about digital service, he’s the Digital Branch Manager at the Topeka Shawnee Library (and an author and a speaker).  If you are interested in digital services and aren’t already reading David’s blog, add it to your feedreader right now, go on, I’ll wait.

This wee he shared his Digital Branch Style Guide and it’s definitely worth passing around.  He covers

• General Guidelines for Blog Posts
• Citing/Attribution
• Featured Section
• Comments – What to do with them
• Creating a “Voice”
• How Can I Get a Conversation Started?
• I have a suggestion/problem. What do I do with it?
• Staff Responsibilities

Go read the whole thing.Similar Posts:

• Change is coming – a new job for me
• Using WordPress for Bibliographies or Readers Advisory Sites
• Library Usage Will Go Up During a Recession – Management Are You Really Prepared?

It looks like there is another Library themed meme making the rounds, this one started by Meredith Farkas at Information Wants To Be Free, I spotted over on David’s blog weeks ago but never imagined it would get around to me. Both The Bald Trainer & Beth Tribe tagged me for this one, so I better get on it.

Q1) How or why did I start to get into blogging?

I’d had a personal blog for a while and in fact I’d started this blog at one point then deleted all the posts in July of 2007 to get a fresh start.  I started this blog as more of a record for me, as I said in one of my very first posts, as a record of my adventures in libraryland.

Q2) How did I gain an audience?

I’m not sure.  As I look back over some of my older posts I cringe a little.  Some of what I thought were my best posts got very little attention (hey look! There’s the first time I said “if you build it they will come – or maybe not”, I say this in most of my presentations)  I’d like to think it’s been by providing useful information combined with my wit and charm.

Q3) What advice would you give to new bloggers who want to make a name for themselves in the biblioblogosphere?

Don’t be afraid to let your personality show through.  Think about the blogs you read and why you read them.  Know who your audience is, libraryland is really big, it’s hard to aim for everyone.  It’s ok to have an opinion, and it’s ok to change your mind later about your opinion. Be honest.  Be kind.Similar Posts:

• We Want to Know What You Think
• Subscribe to this blog by email
• On Weakness: Identify, Cope, Accept Mistakes Will Happen, Acknowledge, Correct, Apologize, Learn and Move On.

I’m taking a break from the video game (PS2) I’m playing, to write this, because even though I tell myself the hard parts teach me patient and perseverance, they really make my head want to explore.   

Last night I finally taught the rescheduled Introduction to Blogging class I was supposed to teach in May.  I really love these classes and even better, patrons love them too.  They get hands on experience and one on one time with a library staff remember.  I usually spend the first half hour explaining things and giving demonstrations, then for the last half  we do hands-on.  Nikki teachs half of the series so when we’re not teaching we’re assisting the other person, because hands-on time for 15 people really does require 2 instructors.  The last half hour always turns into an hour and sometimes an hour & half.   The powerpoint and handouts only tell part of the story, the rest is demonstration, answering questions and assisting people with account set up.  Being flexible is the most important part, you don’t know the skill level of the people in the class and you can have a wide range, you’ve got to be able to cover enough so everyone feels like they are learning. 

I’m really curious, are other libraries teaching classes like this?  How are they going?  If so what subjects are they teaching?  How are they received?Similar Posts:

• Intro to Blogging for the Patrons
• Find Your Friends on Facebook
• The Laptops are Here!

Several people have asked me to share the classes I’m creating for the Patrons.  I’m doing half of the series, a coworker is doing the other half, so you’ll only be seeing half the lessons.

The first one is Introduction to Blogging.  It’s geared towards, beginners, people don’t really know much about blogs or blogging.  I’ll cover some information about blogs then have them set up up if they like.  I’ve also put together a handout to accompany it. 

I’ll be teaching this next month so I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Similar Posts:

• Are other libraries teaching patrons about blogging?
• Computer/Internet Classes for Patrons
• Workshop Wrap Up

I’ve been managing MRRL’s blog for a couple of months now. Just getting staff used to the idea and getting them excited about it. With the New Year came the “official” kick off of the blog. There are now other contributes on a regular basis and an “official” calender of when posts are sent to publish Robin has even got the blog showing up on the Library’s front page. All in all some very exciting things are happening!

We started something today I think tops all of them. Our “We Want to Know What You Think” question! Each month the Director will provide a question we’d like feedback from the public on. As a public library we’re always looking for feedback from our patrons, this is a great way to get focused specific feedback on the questions we’re wondering about!Similar Posts:

• Put Down the Phone and Pay Attention
• Library Learning 2.1 Kicks Off!
• Time Off for Reflection, Regrouping and Prioritizing